The Bus is so slow it never really stresses the engines:p

Personally, I’m hoping to retire off the MD in 2038.

you mean you don’t want to do 4 legs of “day flying” all night long on the 75?

Im beat after one preflight and a couple hours of block. It’s tough to maintain consciousness long enough for the beer and dinner before my head hits the pillow.:D

Planning came into Indoc last week and said plan is to retire MD’s around 2026 gradually. Still looking at replacements but given the current market options it would most likely be 777.. although there are some logistical issues to figure out like ramp space and ground support. Eventually tearing down the old hanger at SDF since they are building a new one, this will increase ramp space. A330 isn’t preferred because it takes up 747 space with little increase in volume.

I overheard one of our mechanics (‘maintainer’ for you mil folks :-) talk about Pratt and Whitney not wanting to support the older engines anymore.
Well, they’ll support them all day long but for mo’ money - which ups isn't willing to pay.

On corporate level the company is realizing that in the not so distant future Amazon might not need our services as much due to the phenomenal growth of their own airline?.. so maybe we won’t need any replacements for the MD?
Total speculation of course but I did get a few hours of sleep at holiday inn.

Better not bigger!!! Volume is already down in some gateways 20-30%

PWs are also on 35 of the 757s and all the A300s. Are they singling out the MD11s only?

Not sure but I doubt it applies to other airplanes as well. Apparently P&W threw a curveball at the company because of the large cost increase of maintaining MD engines in particular. No idea why or whether it’s true.

Just paraphrasing the discussion a MX manager had with an MD captain when I jumpseated on the refrige-freightrrr.

Was told in CQ last year all the aircraft engine owners told UPS a huge cost increase was happening and could mitigate some of the cost by going idle reverse. It’s apparently not just the PW engines, but all that are seeing an increase in cost.

That’s true as well. 74 fleet already uses idle reverse as default.

The MD engine issue was something different they have to deal with because of additional costs coming from P&W regarding the upkeep of MD engines. That was the gist of the conversation. Not sure what he meant..