The Biman Bangladesh Airlines' last McDonnell Douglas DC-10 has taken off for the last time with passengers from HazratShahjalal International Airport on the Dhaka-Birmingham route this morning.
Senior officials of the national flag carrier were present at the airport to see off the passengers and bid farewell to the last DC-10 of the world around 8:30am.
The flight will arrive in Birmingham today. The workhorse will make some fanfare flights in the skies of Birmingham for the following three days too as it flies nine scenic tour flights, reported BSS.
Some 43 years ago, the legendary workhorse logged its maiden voyage for passengers on 5 August, 1971, the year of Bangladesh Liberation, on an American Airlines round trip between Los Angeles and Chicago. Now the final-flight honour goes to the Bangladesh national carrier.
The Biman CEO and Managing Director Kevin Steele told BSS yesterday that there are two reasons why Biman bids farewell to DC-10 -- one is that Biman crews are no longer allowed to man the DC- 10 after February 28 by civil aviation, while the aircraft will also lose its license to fly after May and its high fuel consumption makes it ineffiecient.
"DC-10 uses 35% more fuel per seat than the new Boeing 777-300ER," he said.
Biman initially planned to send the last DC-10 to the Boeing aviation museum in Seattle in the USA but it had to cancel the plan, as Boeing informed that their museum has no space to include the DC-10 within six months.
"Unfortunately we had to cancel the plan to send it to Seattle Museum as we cannot fly the aircraft after May," he said adding "now we will get back the aircraft from Birmingham on February 28 and will decide later about fate of the workhorse here."
The first DC-10 joined Biman fleet in August 1983 and the last one (S2-ACR) was purchased new in 1989. DC-10s have been the backbone of the Biman fleet for nearly a quarter century and at one time the fleet numbered six aircraft.
With the advent of 4th generation Boeing 777s, the phasing out of DC-10s began from the fleet and the last one -the S2-ACR - makes the final passenger flight on 20 February.
The first wide-bodied tri-jet, the Douglas DC-10 had a checkered beginning in the 1970s, but became a mainstay of medium and long- haul routes of many airlines around the world. A staple of several major airlines over four decades -- McDonnell Douglas produced its 446th and last DC-10 in 1989 for Nigeria Airways.
