Brilliant thread.
A fellow DC-9 driver sent me the link to this thread. I owe him a crate of whatever tipple he fancies, what a great read!
I've been lucky enough to fly the DC-9 in 5 variants (-14, -32, -34CF, -82 and -83 in that very order believe it or not!) and it's been a torrid love affair throughout. The Baby Nine was an awe-inspiring little rocket, the sort of plane that you'd find yourself flying from the aft toilet on your first few flights, so far behind her were you! I actually flew serial number 4 as recently as 2009. She is permanently grounded now, sadly.
The -32 was perhaps the best handling one, perfect in every flight regime and a little more docile than the -14 (well, as docile as a DC-9 can be!). My experience of the -34CF was brief, just some training and 4 sectors freelance helping out a fellow operator that was short of crew. She had -17 engines! We took off empty from Dar-es-Salaam and had to vectored well west of our intended route at first because the 737-700 in front couldn't keep his rate of climb high enough to stay above and ahead of us, causing ATC some consternation. We still beat the 737 into Nairobi despite being initially vectored almost 20 miles west of our intended track, having taken off about 3 minutes behind him.
In my opinion, the MD-80 series took everything that was great about the older DC-9's and enhanced it all for us with the fancy autopilot/autothrottle system, as well as the extra poke from the bigger engines.
And what a handsome family of airplanes...
I've also flown the 732 and 733. No disrespect to Boeing, but for me the DC-9 is a better aircraft from a pilot's point of view. Love it!
Last edited by 9-er; 19th Jun 2016 at 14:02.
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