Delta Boeing 757 in retro livery and DC-9-50 in its retirement livery – Photo: Delta Air Lines
An excerpt from the Delta Flight Museum Blog by Tiffany Meng…
It’s not very often we add new aircraft to the Museum’s fleet, so yesterday was a special day. With the help of a great Delta and DOT group, Ship 608, a Boeing 757-200 painted in its original livery, and Ship 9880, a DC-9-50 wearing its retirement livery, were brought over to the Museum from the Technical Operations Center across the airport.
Ship 608 being towed – Photo: Delta Air Lines
In the 1940s, the Museum’s Historic Hangars 1 & 2 were Delta’s regular maintenance hangars and were on Atlanta Airport property. Over the years, the airport has moved a few times, staying within the general area. In the 1980s, Woolman Place road was built and that severed the hangars from airport property. Therefore, moving Museum aircraft to and from the airport is never easy. It takes a lot of coordination between Delta, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Homeland Security, Landmark Aviation, DHL, and FedEx.
See additional photos and continue reading this story at the Delta Fight Museum Blog…
An MD-80 or a DC-9-50?
Surely is a DC-9-50.
David
N675MC is most certainly a classic DC-9-51 – not an MD-80. How was this ever confused? 🙂
Lack of sleep 🙂
David
It’s amazing how much livery alters a plane’s appearance. The 757 in this livery looks pretty old … contrast it with a sharper new livery, and the same plane can look factory-fresh. Fascinating!
Love the old livery. I had the opportunity to take a couple of pictures of this beauty the other day while at ATL.
Are Delta’s DC-50s actually Northwest planes that they acquired in the merger? (Like some of Delta’s 747s?)
Charles:
That is correct – and they also acquired all of their 747s from Northwest in the merger.
As a side note, nearly all of the DC-9-51s that Delta/Northwest used came from even older airlines that Northwest acquired many years ago.
Among those older airlines, I’d think, would have been Republic – which had 1/2 of the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport (with NWA the other half) until the mid-80s.
I think Northwest was still flying DC-9-30s until the merger, and some of those had to be as old as the hills….