The plane truth
Find out where your aircraft has been.
Several recent stories have detailed “last flights” of venerable commercial aircraft, particularly the famed 747, which first captured the traveling public’s imagination when the original test model rolled out of the Boeing factory 50 years ago, in September 1968. ❚ United operated its final 747 passenger flight on Nov. 7, complete with 1970s-era retro uniforms, menus and in-flight entertainment on its last run from San Francisco to Honolulu. Then in December, Delta Air Lines flew its final scheduled flight with a 747, from Seoul to Detroit. ❚ But operating scheduled flights for big airlines is just one form of duty for large jet aircraft. Many commercial airplanes have historic timelines that extend both before and after their days flying for the majors. They may wind up carrying celebrities or international potentates, or toiling for foreign air forces. During my own airline career at Overseas National Airways, Tower Air and Pan Am, I encountered dozens of airplanes that had rich histories.
Breaking the code
Sometimes the backstory of an airplane is embedded in its “tail number” registration, which on all U.S.-registered aircraft begins with the letter N. Every airline in the world is assigned a two-letter designator code by the International Air Transport Association, such as AA (American), DL (Delta) and UA (United). Many registrations include those two letters at the end of the tail number, as in N123AA.
Take Tower Air, a JFK International Airport-based carrier that flew hundreds of thousands of passengers on scheduled, charter and military flights for 17 years up until 2000. Between
1987 and 1990, I was a system manager when the centerpiece of our fleet was
N601BN. That was a Boeing 747-127 series that was first delivered to Texasbased Braniff Airways in May 1971. That machine soon established a world record, exceeding 30,500 flight hours in six years.
That 100th 747 became rather famous because Braniff painted it in a carrot-colored motif that eventually had the entire industry referring to the plane as “Big Orange.” Earlier nicknames included “The Great Pumpkin” — often used by air traffic controllers — and “Fat Albert.”
By 1983, The Great Pumpkin had been passed from Braniff to two other carriers before becoming the first aircraft flown by start-up Tower Air. Unlike subsequent members of the fleet that were registered using Tower’s two-letter code FF, N601BN kept the BN registry as homage to its history. In the late 1980s I rode N601BN across six continents, overseeing hundreds of flights on civilian and military fields, and old-timers often noticed the tail number and asked me if that whiteand-blue 747 truly was the original Big Orange. It was scrapped in 1994, 24 years after its first test flight in 1970.
Previously owned
Even the shiniest paint job doesn’t mean your plane is new. Airlines acquire planes in a variety of ways, often through complex leases with other airlines, third parties and financial firms. An aviation analyst once told me, “General Electric and Citibank are the country’s largest airlines.”
Consider Southwest, which oper- ates a fleet of 706 Boeing 737s. Many were delivered directly to Southwest, but others joined the line in roundabout ways. Take N7805B, which, according to AirFleets.net, first flew for Virgin Blue, currently Virgin Australia Airlines. It then spent five years operating for Aerolineas Argentinas before joining the Southwest fleet in 2016. Or
N7830A, which flew for three carriers based in Denmark — Maersk Air, Sterling Airlines and Jet Time — before it began operating for Southwest in 2015.
Conversely, many planes that began their lives flying for domestic carriers have since found homes far from the U.S. N353P, a Boeing 737, first took to the skies for Piedmont in 1988, and moved to USAir (later US Airways) when that airline merged with Piedmont. Since 2006 it has been based in Spain, Denmark and South Africa.
Low-cost carriers often buy older planes such as C-GWJG, a Boeing 737 that launched with Pacific Western in
1972 and also flew for Pan Am and several other airlines before ending service 33 years later with low-fare WestJet in Canada. N886GA, first delivered
28 years ago in 1990, has flown for six carriers and is now with Allegiant Air.
Not-so-final flights
Once a major airline determines a given airplane has outlived its service, by no means does it follow that the machine will be grounded. Commercial aircraft have found new lives in myriad ways:
❚ Some are pressed into government service, such as N905NA, a Boeing 747 first delivered to American Airlines in 1970, but which became world famous as the first aircraft used to transport space shuttle orbiters.
❚ Others are used for scientific purposes, such as the 747 originally flown by Air France that was intentionally blown up in the UK in 1997 to test the effects of terrorist bombs.
❚ And some wind up being converted into hotels, like the South African Air Boeing 727 outfitted in teak in the Costa Rican jungle, or the 747 once owned by Singapore Airlines (and later by both Pan Am and Tower Air) that’s now the Jumbo Hostel at Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport.
Others end up at an aircraft “boneyard” such as the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville. The dry desert climate provides a rust-free home for the aircraft. Some are being rebuilt or repainted and some are in temporary storage until new operators can be found. Others die slow deaths as they’re sold off for parts.
Famous pink slips
There’s never been a shortage of well-known people acquiring former airliners for their personal use:
❚ President Trump campaigned in
N757AF, the Boeing 757 he acquired in
2011, 20 years after it first began flying for several entities, including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and TAESA Lineas Aéreas, the low-cost airline based in Mexico.
❚ N240K flew for American Airlines from 1948 through 1958 and then was bought by John F. Kennedy, who successfully campaigned for the presidency in 1960 onboard the Convair 240 named Caroline.
❚ Elvis Presley also named an aircraft after his daughter, a Convair 880 formerly owned by Delta that he dubbed Lisa Marie. In 1984, it was put on display at Graceland in Memphis.
Sometimes airplanes become famous in undesirable ways. In January
1970, first lady Patricia Nixon christened Pan Am’s N736PA when it became the first 747 to operate a scheduled flight, from New York to London. That airplane — dubbed Clipper Victor — generated headlines twice more, as the first 747 hijacked (to Cuba, later in 1970) and as one of the two jumbo jets that collided in Tenerife, Spain, in
1977, killing 583.
That is still the highest aviation death toll except for 9/11.