Delta Retires Last ‘Mad Dog’ Jets

The crew of a Delta Air Lines flight 1114 from Atlanta has deployed the thrust reversers as their MD88 lands on runway 28R at John Glenn Columbus Airport in Dec. 7, 2019.

A chapter in U.S. aviation history closed this week when Delta Air Lines operated its last flights using the MD88 and MD90 jetliners.

The last flight of a “Mad Dog” was Delta flight 88 from Washington Dulles International Airport to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Tuesday morning.

The plane received a water cannon salute at both airports, which marked the last scheduled domestic passenger flight of a McDonnell Douglas designed and produced jetliner in the United States in daily service.

Flight 88 was the last of a handful of Delta flights using aircraft from the MD80 family of jetliners to land in Atlanta on the morning of June 2.

The last MD90 arrived from Houston Bush Intercontinental Airport as Delta flight 90.

Other last MD88 flights landed in Atlanta from Hartford, Pittsburgh, Sarasota, Norfolk, Richmond and Raleigh-Durham.

Over the course of 24 hours earlier this week Delta flew “Mad Dogs on several routes from Atlanta, including to Columbus and Indianapolis on Monday.

The last MD88 to serve John Glenn Columbus Airport landed at 10:58 p.m. on Monday and departed without passengers at 10:55 a.m. on Tuesday for Blytheville, Arkansas, where Delta is storing its retired MD88 and MD90 aircraft.

Delta was the last U.S. airline to fly the MD80 family of aircraft. American Airlines retired the last of its MD80s in September 2019 while Allegiant Air retired its MD80s in November 2018.

The Mad Dogs of all three carriers were regular users of Northeast Ohio airports in recent years.

An American MD80 flew from Cleveland to Dallas-Fort Worth on Sept. 4, 20190, the last day of operation by that carrier of an MD80.

Delta flew MD88 aircraft to Cleveland from Atlanta until earlier this year. During the COVID-19 pandemic Delta began using Boeing 717s on the Cleveland-Atlanta route in place of MD88s.

Until about a year ago, Delta also flew MD88 aircraft between Akron-Canton Airport and Atlanta.

At one time, Delta had four flights a day between CAK and Atlanta with MD88 equipment.

That was later trimmed to three daily roundtrips. Delta then began using regional jets on two of those three roundtrips.

The MD80 traces its heritage to the 1965 introduction of the DC-9 jetliner by Douglas Corporation for which Delta was the launch customer.

The MD80 was a stretched version of the DC-9 that was rebranded as MD80 after Douglas merged with McDonnell Aircraft Corporation in 1967.

The Boeing 717 is a smaller member of the MD80 family and was initially designated the MD95 until being rebranded after McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing in 1997.

The MD88 and MD90 once were the backbone of Delta’s domestic flight network with the carrier operating 120 MD88s and 65 MD90s.

Delta had planned to retire both aircraft at the end of 2020, but accelerated their retirements due to a dramatic drop in airline traffic during the pandemic.

Delta, like most carriers, has grounded much of its fleet, parking half of the 1,316 planes used in Delta mainline and Delta connection service.

Aviation authorities said that during the 33-year operating life of the MD80 the fleet of 1,191 aircraft built flew 750 million passengers and logged 12 million hours in the air.

Delta once operated 900 MD88 flights a day and flew them to nearly every U.S. Airport that it served.

The last Delta MD88 flight was a subdued affair. Due to social distancing restrictions just 84 of the 149 seats aboard Delta flight 88 were filled.

Balloons and banners decorated the departure gate at Dulles and passengers and crew posed for a group portrait with most of them wearing masks.

The flight used aircraft N900DE, which was the 100^th MD88 to be delivered to Delta.

It landed in Atlanta at 9:55 a.m. and later that day departed for Blytheville.

The Mad Dog moniker was applied in part because of the plane’s model initials and because pilots said it took off from the runway like a rocket or a mad dog.

Trains, Planes and an Automobile

NS 412 is about to rumble past the Olmsted Falls depot with its consist of high top hopper cars.

Olmsted Falls is one of those railfanning spots that is well known by many locals, but which tends to be overshadowed by the better known and “patronized”  Berea a few minutes away.

The advantage of going to Berea is that you get CSX traffic as well as the Norfolk Southern’s Chicago Line. But I like Olmsted Falls because there tends to be fewer people there and you can easily get on both sides of the tracks to take advantage of whatever lighting conditions may exist.

On a recent Sunday, I went to the Falls to catch a very late running Amtrak No. 49. While I got “bonus coverage” when NS 8100 (the Nickel Plate Road heritage locomotive) led the 20W past. I covered both of those trains in earlier coverage.

This post is devoted to a few other trains that I captured while waiting for Amtrak No. 49.

I begin with three images of an eastbound coal train. Although not as flashy or “glamorous” as a passenger train or a train led by an H unit, I thought this train reflects the heritage of the Norfolk & Western of hauling coal from the West Virginia mountains.

I converted these photos to black and white because the flat lighting conditions resulted in muted colors. But I also did it because, well, certain trains just seem to call for being in a black and white world. A coal train is one of them.

As I watched car after car roll past with the term “high top” on them, I kept thinking about high top sneakers, which were popular in my younger days. If I recall, those were black and white. If memory serves me correctly, this train carried symbol 412.

There always seems to be an outlier in every group and so it was with this train.There was one “low top” hopper car in the consist.

A while after the passage of the 412 came another coal train, this one carrying symbol 417. The Toledo East dispatcher told this train to pace itself going west because it would soon come to a halt behind a 15N that was stopped ahead.

NS was single tracking for 18 miles west of CP 218 and the 417 would spend several hours waiting for a route and be passed by at least one train, which was carrying a load of empty crude oil tankers.

Another feature of Olmsted Falls is that it lies beneath the final approach path of runways 6R and 6L at nearby Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

When air traffic is landing on those runways, as it was on Sunday, you get nice close-up views of the planes. Air traffic in and out of Cleveland isn’t what it used to be following the closing this year of the United Airlines hub that had been built by Continental Airlines. United still, though, operates the most daily flights from CLE.

I was standing by my car between trains and planes when I looked over and saw two small convertibles following each other northbound on Brookside Drive.

I wasn’t in a good position to photograph both of them with the zoom lens I had on my camera at the time. The best I could do was this going away shot of the second of the two. I don’t know what make or model this is, but I’m sure this guy enjoyed toolin’ around town in his toy.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

There is always an outlier in every group. Here is the only “low top” hopper in the bunch.

One “low top” in the consist did not spoil the uniform appearance of this coal hoppers train.

NS 417 is taking it easy going west. Note the BNSF “Grinstein” as the trailing unit.

The motive power lash up, er, I mean motive power CON-sist, of this eastbound stack train featured an array of colors and ownerships.

I’ve always enjoyed photographing the uniform profile of unit trains. The 65R rolls westward although not for long. This train would later be routed around the 417.

Delta 1474 from Atlanta has MD88 equipment.

United 1092 from Fort Myers, Fla., arrives with a 737-900.

I think you can figure out which airline this is. It is flight 520 from Denver and features an Airbus 319. Frontier has been picking up some of the markets abandoned by United earlier this year.

Enjoying a Sunday drive.