Few Travelers Will Shed A Tear Over Its Demise, But The McDonnell Douglas MD-80 Changed Our World

Nobody wanted it.  And when they got it, they didn’t love it much. They only tolerated it.

It’s maker literally had to give it away at a below-cost price, and agree to take 100 percent of the risk in the deal, just to get somebody to “test drive” it.

Now that unwanted, never-really-appreciated airplane – the McDonnel Douglas MD-80 – is being put out to pasture by the major airline whose dramatic growth to the top of the global aviation industry it enabled.

Last Tuesday American Airlines crews flew 20 of the twin-jets to Roswell, N.M., home of goofy flying saucer and alien invader stories and one of the world’s largest aircraft “boneyards.” Those planes, like a couple hundred other American MD-80s now parked, sans engines, at the airport at Roswell International Air Center arrived there on a one-way ticket. They’ll be stripped of usable and valuable parts. Their hulls will sit in the dry air of high dessert waiting until some small foreign airline, nondescript cargo carrier, or entrepreneur with a hair-brained idea buys them. Or, more likely, they’ll be scrapped and their metal, worth maybe $10,000, will be recycled.

An American Airlines MD-80. The carrier’s long-time workhorse domestic plane is being phased out and will be gone entirely from the fleet by the end of 2018 (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Within the next 28 months all 60 or so MD-80s remaining in American’s fleet will join those MD-80s already in Roswell. The small number of MD-80s still being flown by other U.S. carriers, no doubt, soon will follow.

Commercial aircraft almost always reach their end this way; sitting in some remote, arid field waiting for a trip through the crusher. Only a handful of any particular type ever survive as museum pieces, training tools, roadside diners, or the occasional home for some eccentric.