MD-80: Why is this plane still flying?

By BusinessWeek

The jet at the center of American Airlines' flight travails gulps gas and rumbles about in a far noisier fashion than newer models. It first took flight nearly 30 years ago and today is greeted by some passengers as a technology-deprived torture chamber.

Yet despite its age and costs, the MD-80 remains a valued and dependable workhorse in airline fleets worldwide -- which points to the many nuances in assessing flight safety at a time of heightened concern about aircraft maintenance.

American -- which dubs the plane the Super80 -- is the world's largest operator of the jets, with 300. Delta Air Lines (DAL, news, msgs) flies 117. In Europe, Alitalia and SAS Scandinavian Airlines are also major operators of the jet.

"The MD-80 has been a terrific airplane for American Airlines," said Gerard Arpey, chairman and chief executive of American parent AMR Corp. (AMR, news, msgs). Arpey's comment came during a news conference convened Thursday to discuss the airline's flight cancellations, which by Friday had exceeded 3,000. "This (incident) will have no impact on our long-term fleet plans," he said. "The bigger issue for the MD-80 will be oil prices."

The MD-80's woes began last month when the Federal Aviation Administration began a series of compliance audits and found that bundles of wires stored in the jets' wheel wells had not been secured to comply with a September 2006 agency directive. That led to widespread flight cancellations at American and Delta to give technicians time to inspect and perform the required work.

FAA inspectors at American's Dallas-Fort Worth hub found Tuesday that the wire work had not been performed according to specification. That led to another round of checks on all of American's MD-80s.

The airline said a third of the jets were back in service on Thursday, and it expected all the work to be completed by Saturday night. Delta canceled a "handful" of flights midweek to reinspect the wire-bundle work and anticipated normal service today, a spokeswoman said.

The MD-80 was built by McDonnell Douglas, a company bought by Boeing (BA, news, msgs) in 1997. The 140-seat plane succeeded the venerable DC-9, the world's third-best-selling aircraft, which dates to 1965. The MD-80 first flew in October 1980, and has four derivative models. It was billed as a fuel-efficient replacement for Boeing's three-engine, three-crew 727.

The MD-80 was a stretched version of Douglas Aircraft's DC-9, and airline lore has it that McDonnell Douglas used "80" in the name to signal that it had a product designed for the 1980s, a new era of deregulation and competition. McDonnell Douglas built the planes for 19 years; production ended in late 1999.

Continued: A relatively young fleet

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