There’s Still an American Airlines MD80 in Dallas, After All

The retirement of the American Airlines MD80 has been written about extensively and covered across all sorts of media. I am didn’t find the event nearly as momentous and many did, but there were plenty of celebrations as the plane made its last commercial flight – AA80 – from Chicago O’Hare to Dallas Fort-Worth and then media took a trip on an MD80 to park the aircraft in the desert.

While I’ve read reports that American sent the last of its MD80s to Roswell, New Mexico in fact there’s still an MD80 sitting in Dallas and it’s going to stay there.

The aircraft will be used for de-icing training. So while passengers will no longer benefit from 2-3 seating (only one middle seat per row) and up to 40 inches from seat back to seat back in first class, American Airlines employees will still play with the aircraft.

Ironically one of the things American is having issues with its mechanics union over is that they want to outsource de-icing at some of the stations where it’s still done in-house.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. This was a horrible plane and I flew many a flight staying local to AA happily
    Of course back than AA once ran a great ff program and had reasonably fair customer service and customer recovery when they messed things up
    But the one upside of this aircraft was it was from an era of pre D.Parker the menace
    So the coach seats were comfortable enough for the under 4 hour flights
    Now @ AA it’s almost always a S**t show of lost and delayed luggage ,flight cancellations, massive delays, unhappy customers miserable employees driven to criminal behavior ,uncomfortable seats terrible award availability and extortionately priced revenue and award seats and terrible food and beverage
    Now no longer support AA after many decades of doing so
    I awoke from a bad dream months ago where Trump started running American after being impeached and ran it into bankruptcy like a failed casino hotel
    except in reality after awaking there is in reality someone equally awful their CEO yes DP still a nightmare (sigh)

  2. The mad dog was/is a great airplane, tough and over built in strength. It was for real pilots not for the joystick guys.

    For the other person needing TDS meds, I would add some crayons to ease the anxiety.

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