Originally Posted by
GogglesPisano
I flew it for 3 years and counted the days until my freeze expired and then prayed for a new AE:
Cons:
1) The design is older than the 717. Not the screens but everything else.
2) Douglas engineers thought hydraulics were some sort of voodoo, so you're dealing with cables and pulleys. The elevators literally bang around on the ground in a tailwind.
3) The windows leak during de-icing, like bad. Like put anything valuable on the center pedestal bad.
4) For some reason the seats are on pedestals, so if you drop something you have to get out of your seat to grab it.
5) The wipers are two of the most useless devices ever constructed in aviation. They "park" right in front of your nose. You will have to open the window and pour water on the windshield to park them on the ground. But at least they wake you up.
6) Speaking of windows, you will have to open the left window to see the parking area in the rain at night. Your left window has been scrubbed by so many jetways it is literally opaque.
7) You never have a problem getting down, because the aircraft really wasn't designed to fly.
8) When you deploy the speedbrakes the aircraft rolls: Douglas engineering at its finest.
9) If you want coffee or to wash your hands on the ground you have to start the APU, which will most likely be on MEL.
10) You have to go outside to check the water/waste (to be honest, it shouldn't be our job anyway.)
11) You have to look at a mirror to use the standby compass.
12) With the amount of legs per day you will think, "I left the regionals for this?"
Pros:
1) It's a quiet cockpit.
2) Nice screens.
3) Single-engine autoland.
I much prefered the 737.
Fire away.
It's a DC-9 NEO, that's all it is.