North Eastern Airways (NEA)
Chicago, Illinois
Sunday, July 13th, 1997
Today marks the end of an Era in US Aviation History as the final 21 operational DC-9-10s, the oldest DC-9's in existence, were retired by North Eastern Airways after a long and prosperous career. NEA was a launch Customer for the DC-9 in the early 1960's, taking a risk on the relatively small DC-9 while on shaky financial grounds coming out of the Post WWII PistonLiner Era.
N722NE, the first DC-9 for NEA, was constructed on July 3rd, 1966 and was delivered just three weeks later at Douglas' Santa Monica Plant. Immediately Pressed into service, the type could be seen across our network flying our most prestigious routes taking over for the gas guzzling Dehavilland Comets, while the L-188 became the backbone of our short haul ops. While 722 is our oldest DC-9 flying, it is actually our lowest timed DC-9 with only 101,700hrs. Ship 735 takes the crown for having the most flight hours out of any -10 at 119,200 hours.
The -10 introduced an efficient aircraft that could get our passengers to their destination in record time and in great comfort, a feat loved by our passengers. With 236 examples in the fleet, The DC-9 became the backbone to NEA as we went on to launch later models, each introducing higher capacities or longer range operations.
Age combined with stricter noise regulations has set in motion the beginning of the DC-9's retirement cycle. While our DC-9-51's are relatively young, having only been delivered just prior to our initial MD-82s, the rest of the fleet has an average age of 27.5 years. The carrier plans to have all -21/-31/-41 aircraft retired by the turn of the century.
The DC-9 Legacy will live on well into the future as we operate an efficient and young fleet of MD-80/MD-90 aircraft with a still yet to be delivered fleet of 717 aircraft, which will help to retire the -34/-51 fleets along with 737NG's.