Fears and ignorance about "old" planes as seen in the responces below is exactly why many people I know who work in the aviation industry do not have a smile on their face once a westerner board their plane. Overdramazation of everything and fears it will crash every constant minute.

Reading this thread made me to consider installing my CLS MD82 again. Started to adapt to NGX in the last few weeks (from Airbus), and I can't get over MD-82 that easily, it's just that special, even CLS version which has quite good looking VC and fantastic fps.

Of all the aircraft I've flown on, I've logged more hours on the Lawn Dart / Mad Dog than any other.

Of course it's all been on AA and Allegiant since they fly where I fly.

In fact I just posted a bunch of AA Super 80 videos in Avsim's video forum for any who care to check them out.

AA's maintenance facility in Tulsa, OK is almost a McDonnell Douglas manufacturing facility.

They are the experts on the MD and they also handle the heavy maintenance for Allegiant.

I have no second thoughts at all about flying the aircraft. Sure she's an old girl but she's still got it where it counts!

Deaf ears I guess.

 

Yes, my uneasiness when flying on a 20+ year old aircraft isn't necessarily based on any hard facts regarding the aircraft's actual safety record.  That doesn't negate the fact that, let me repeat, the older a machine is the greater the chance that it will suffer a failure.  Period.  I don't care how much maintenance you do, unless of course you completely overhaul the thing periodically.

 

Comparing the U.S. Air Force's maintenance practices to those of private airlines which frequently get fined for not practicing due diligence in maintaining and inspecting their aircraft is just plain silly.  I was in the Air Force so I know what I'm talking about.  The Air Force's safety record is outstanding, and they have very strict maintenance guidelines and inspection regimes which either get followed to the letter, or someone gets into a whole heck of a lot of trouble.

 

Enjoy your next flight on a 25 year old MD-80 or 737-300.

Deaf ears I guess.

 

My logic is actually pretty simple for why I prefer United... I just like newer planes.  Has nothing to do with the safety... has everything to do with comfort and that "new car smell."

That doesn't negate the fact that, let me repeat, the older a machine is the greater the chance that it will suffer a failure.  Period.  I don't care how much maintenance you do, unless of course you completely overhaul the thing periodically.

I simply don't think thats true, not the way you frame it. The older something gets the more parts will wear and lead to eventually planned failure. Provided you inspect and replace those parts on a correct schedule and maintain them in between with the correct procedures then the likelihood of failure is no greater than it is when it rolls off the line brand new. There is a significant difference between routine predictable failure and catastrophic unpredictable failure and the latter is often not even unpredictable.

 

The problem is when we incorrectly consider routine failures that are basically designed into a system (as in we expect X hours til this part or system needs maintenance or replacement with a healthy budgeted overhead for random variables) as being in the same continuum as those which happen outside the norm of prediction.

 

Mature aircraft simply don't fail randomly, there is always a sign that it will happen and it could be prevented. Maintenance, replacement, or failing to operate it correctly. I would agree with you that I would feel uneasy in older aircraft if I were flying with some second rate airline in a third world country, but in the West with some of the more reputed airlines such as American or United I'm not going to be uneasy about old airframes specifically because these are the guys who aren't likely to save money by skimping on maintenance. It doesn't matter how old an aircraft is, it could be only a few years old, because if they don't maintain them properly then they'll fail rather quickly. They fly these aircraft so hard and in such great numbers that if they were maintaining them poorly we'd see them failing all the time. Take the Alaska MD-80 that had the jackscrew failure. It failed because it wasn't lubricated properly. Lubrication is not something that fails after 20-25 years if you maintain it poorly. It fails relatively quickly because lubrication exists in areas where failure is a significant risk without it.

 

Honestly, if you think that any airline is not performing maintenance correctly on any of their airplanes then you shouldn't fly on any of them. Doesn't matter how new it is, bad maintenance culture will bring a 5 year old airframe down just as easily as a 20 year old one. Once you validate the design of a system, such as the MD-80, then the likelihood of unpredicted catastrophic failure becomes remote. We're talking hundreds of thousands of flight hours in this aircraft validating its safety which would leave us only with the risk of  bad maintenance bringing it down. As airframes get older the maintenance will inevitably become more involved but until replacement of parts becomes hard, which isn't likely given Boeing's ownership of MD and its shortlived production of the same airframe, then its no more dangerous outside of assuming human negligence.

 

Lets look at the likelihood of an incident. If I flew in the last year or two exclusively on MD-80s operated by any North American airline I would have experienced a major 0% failure rate. If I flew in that same period of time on 787s exclusively then I would have experienced a much higher probability of experiencing an in flight fire and smoke in the cabin thanks to battery failure. So much for new being safer. Meanwhile last year in Bali an incompetent pilot managed to crash and wreck a 6 week old 737-800.

 

In air travel I don't fear catastrophic failure as much as I fear catastrophic incompetence. If I can't trust the airline to maintain its aircraft or train its pilots then it doesn't matter how old it is. If I do trust them then I don't care if the airplane is 2 or 20 years old. The main reason airlines replace aircraft these days is because of better fuel economy, not because they're unsafe to fly. SAS got rid of their Dash 8s after declaring them unsafe due to repeated failures of the landing gear. Turned out their maintenance practices were the main culprit, and they then sought to get more Dash 8s as a result.

 

I don't think these are rational fears, I think they're rooted in a kind of thinking that isn't particularly logical, but which appeals to a certain mode of thought which isn't substantiated by anything concrete.

The only reason to not want to fly on an American Airlines MD-80s is because you think they don't maintain them properly or perform routine inspections which would reveal whether the aircraft is no longer airworthy and should be replaced.

Or lack of in-flight entertainment.

Or lack of in-flight entertainment.

Exactly!  New tech = cool.