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25 February 1965 - 55 Years ago today, the Douglas DC-9 made its first flight.
N9DC, the DC-9-14 was the first plane of his kind, He made his first flight at Long Beach airport on the coast of Southern California on 25 February 1965: At 11:26 AM Pacific Standard Time.
his first flight lasted 2 Hours and 13 Minutes, He would then made his first landing at Edwards Air Force Base where the test program would continue.
After flight test and certification program was over, N9DC would then be hired by his first employer - Trans Texas Airways in 1966 with his registration changed to N1301T, He would serve Trans Texas from 1966 to 1982, when the airline merged with Continental Airlines, he would worked briefly for Continental for several months with the same tail number, after that, The First DC-9 would found his new job at Sunworld International Airlines and worked for the company for five years, from 13 May 1983 to 1988.
He would then moved to another airlines and worked for Emerald Air in November 1988.
By the 1991, he has flown to Spain and worked for Air Sur, with the registration EC-622 and EC-FCQ, though his employment with the airline was very brief, only lasted 3 months from 29 January to 30 April 1991.
He would then return to the United States working for Viscount Air Service with the tail number N914LF until 1992 and eventually retired from airline service in that year.
If you would like to know more about this particular airframe - the serial number of the real aircraft is 45695, It's the first DC-9 ever built.
In the real world, the 45695 has had a rather tragic ending where it got cut up for scraps sometime back in 1990s but in my living airplane world, the first DC-9 would still be alive, albeit, already retired from airline service since the concept of scrapping a living aircraft did not exist in my living plane world.
The DC-9 was produced from 1965 to 1982, with 976 airframes being built, this number doesn't include its successors based on the model such as the MD80, MD90 and Boeing 717, but if its successors were included, that number would go up to 2441.
It was introduced and entered airlines service on 8 December 1965 with Delta Air Lines being the launch customer of the type.
The background in this image doesn't represent the exact location where this DC-9 made his first flight.