On February 25, 1965, the Douglas DC-9 took to the skies, creating a new narrowbody aircraft for the commercial aviation industry to take notice to. Much like the airlines that have utilized the jet, the aircraft itself has gone through various transformations becoming the McDonnell-Douglas MD-80 and MD-90 and eventually the Boeing 717. Now, as airlines react to the ever-changing COVID-19 marketplace a year is becoming more and more associated with the rear-engine aircraft design: 2025. The Boeing 717 is…
Hi Fly, the Portuguese charter carrier, has announced its intentions to retire its sole Airbus A380 aircraft by the end of the 2020 calendar year. The carrier has operated the aircraft since July 4, 2018 on a lease from Doric Aviation. The airline has decided to not renew its lease,…
On Tuesday, Emirates officially retired its first A380 jumbo jet. The aircraft, registered as A6-EDB, has been in Emirates’ fleet for 12 years and completed its final flight on Oct. 27. While this retirement is not a direct causality of the COVID-19 pandemic, the once-reverenced "Eighth Wonder" is slowly withdrawing…
Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines will operate its final Boeing 777 flight on Oct. 31, the carrier confirmed to AirlineGeeks. After announcing earlier this year that it would retire all of its 777s by the end of 2020, the date is now official. Two flights have been put on the schedule…
Delta Air Lines has retired its final Boeing 737-700 aircraft, sources close to the matter confirmed to AirlineGeeks. Delta had eight 737-700s in its fleet as of Sept. 13 and the final planes were ferried to storage on Sept. 25. Delta’s final 737-700s were registered as N301DQ, N302DQ, N303DQ, N304DQ,…
Delta Air Lines’ Chief Operating Officer Gil West announced his plans to retire from the company. The announcement was made public in an internal memo to employees from CEO Ed Bastian on Aug. 25. Considered the architect of the carrier’s operating performance excellence, West joined Delta in 2008 as the…
The warning signs were there in March when the coronavirus stopped the aviation industry dead in its tracks. The knock-on effects from the global downturn of passenger traffic were already being calculated by airlines across the world, with decisions being made for what life would look like for airlines post-COVID.…
This week we faced some sad news. It was slipped to us right before the start of the holiday weekend and it didn’t get much attention outside of the aviation community, but for us, the news hit home hard. It wasn’t anything we weren’t expecting. We knew it was coming,…
Qantas has prematurely retired its final Boeing 747s in response to dwindling demand amid the coronavirus pandemic. AirlineGeeks first reported the airline's final 747 flights in March 2020. The first of its last two superjumbos left Sydney on Tuesday around 9:30 a.m. It flew first to Los Angeles. From there,…
In an aviation world, where the number of large-capacity aircraft are becoming fewer and fewer, it is always a somber day to see even more retired. Unfortunately, another operator of the 747 has retired its final so-called Queen of the Skies. After nearly 30 years of operating variants of the…
