Delta fast track to Captain
 

Since almost the beginning of the commercial airline business, junior pilots have had to toil years in the second chair waiting to win a pair of captain’s wings. Now Delta Air Lines Inc. is offering them the chance to vault into a captain’s seat in as little as six months. The catch? The promotion requires flying an unloved, aging plane nicknamed the “Mad Dog” that Delta plans to retire in three years.


https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/d...100029497.html

... that, and sitting reserve in New York ready to cover any one of 3 airports on short notice via your own transportation. I'd still do it though... however even if I can make it there, the Mad Dog is set to leave before that :(

wonder where all these ac are going? American dumping them, Delta...
As I mentioned in others posts, with the emphasis on getting warm bodies on the flightdeck, you cant find sim time anywhere, so the op should be good (ish)

I'd have flown a skip with wings to get a command.

I went back to flying DC3s to get my first command. I was required to fly with very inexperienced skippers on the BAC 1-11 and really felt quite at home doing everything if needed, but the seniority thing was what it was.

Dak was not the fun I remembered. Reach for the radar . . . oh, that's right, we haven't got one. Nave aids. Ooooo . . . I remember nave aids. But, I could do a full procedural VDF approach by the end of my time on that machine.

Tell the kids of today.

Delta and American use the heck out of their aircraft before retiring them, so I suspect most will end up in an aircraft boneyard in the Arizona/California desert and be scrapped before long.
A few will probably end up flying for some third world operator who can pick them up cheap, then cannibalize a few to keep the others flying for a while.

td,

The life of these ac is far from over, especially considering the lifespan/performance. Many operators still fly these ac.
I just flew a UAL MD from DAL to ORF, and the ac was very nicely maintained and really, in pretty good shape.

Air Canada?

UA has Mad Dogs? And they fly them out AA's hub to ORF? Who knew?

If memory serves, the expected life of the MD90 was north of 100,000 cycles,
so given reasonable maintenance and barring corrosion, they should outlast us.

Sorry, but DAL is a WN hub, not AA's -- which is DFW. But agree with you that UA has no Mad Dogs left. :)

UAL never had MD's. They had DC-10s and -8s.

A few have made the P2F conversion but this idea doesn't seem to be getting a tremendous amount of traction. There is a large supply of well maintained air frames available, probably at a good price:

The MD-80 Freighter Conversion, In Pictures | Things With Wings

grabit
 

Grabit, B707: did it and never regretted.

We're talking MD80 series, not MD90, and the new ones are 20+ years old. There are early 1990s build 767s and 747-400s that have north of 100k hours. And the Mad Dogs are pretty noisy - there will soon be a lot of airports that won't allow them (especially in the wee hours when freighter operators like to fly)

fast jet command hours for my resume
 

Yeah, still I like the :), fast jet command hours for my resume.

What happens when they retire the aircraft? Do the junior guys go back to the rhs? Do they keep their command pay? If so then it seems like a no brainer.

They go where their seniority allows them to go and are paid by the airplane, seat in that airplane and years of service.

To expand on what bafanguy said, if Delta parked the MD80 tomorrow, those very junior captains would likely go to the A320/737 right seat- with FO pay.