Here's a good read if you have some time to kill.... six pages worth. The stuff of ledgends-

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-f ... =y&page=1#

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Untitled-%28IRS-Airlines%29/Boeing-727-223-Adv/0217065/L/&sid=01d9a8dd57b33fcca2b2af6929cda092


During it's better days with American Airlines:

What a story! Wonder if there's been a documentary on this? Be a good hour show, or even a movie.

Interesting story! Reminds me that they found a burned 727 out in the Sahara last year.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i6w-doyjewoRGhOaaAHVYfrVWONQ

The 727...

...was my favorite airliner. Just loved flying that machine. You could put her in a 30 degree climbing bank all trimmed out....reach down in your flight kit and rumage around for a minute or so....look back up and there she'd be...... just as you had left her. A wonderful hand flying airplane. Steeply swept wings a pointy nose, no magic, 1950's technology. It needed a flight engineer to do the job of the modern computerized cockpits. Just a simple autopilot, VOR/ILS nav., thick levers and knobs.... hundreds of bulky switches, big round dials like God intended.

Approach to landings were a fun challenge. If one let the airspeed get a bit slow or the thrust a bit low...the sink rate would increase like a falling stone....it would take massive power to recover. Many a poor boy recovered too late and smashed the earth. As we always said....."You never knew when the 727 would dive for the dirt." But if you stayed on top of it she would reward you with landings unfelt.

Loved how she would continue to roll on the mains with the nose wheel 10 feet in the air, during rotation. When heavy "Miss Piggy" would roll along like that for a few hundred feet. Finally with a heave and groan she'd lift off. A slow climbing airlplane....she would come down at 6,000 fpm with the spoilers deployed....even at traffic pattern speeds. Once in cruise she was one of the fastest airliners in the sky. Mach .90 redline cruise. Of course it was so noisy at those speeds that one could hardly hear themselves think. Manual spoilers on landing made for super greaser touchdowns. Roll her on, ease out the spoilers, add a touch of reverse. begin lowering the nose to the runway....transition to gentle braking as one came off the reverse....ahh pure sex!

Three man/woman cockpit....made it a real gentleman's airplane.

The pictured 727 was in pristine condition when AA sold her. Too bad they turned her into a trash can.

Bob

Very interesting! Amazing some of the stuff that goes on in 3rd world countries...

Nice right up, Bob! I'm a big fan of Vintage Iron. Love the looks and sounds of them. Going to be very sad one of these days when the 727's, 707's, G2's, Lear 20's will be gone for ever. Heck, there's hardly any of them flying these days as it is (at least form where I hang out at).

I saw a cool Lear 28 at Austin, NV a year ago (2009). Very cool what that plane can do

My friend's dad here in McGrath was a captain for Wien long ago. He talks about flying once in a while, and only once spoke about the 727. There was a glint in his eye as he stared out the window off into space, and you could almost see the reflection of the horizon he was gazing at in his memory as he told me about the good old days decades ago as he told the story. A smoother ride than the 737, those big old wings would flex in the turbulence. "I never spilled a drink in first class..." he said. God I love listening to old flying stories...

Strange situation with that jet...
I have also heard(strictly from the rumor mill when we were bored crossing the Atlantic a few times) about drug and gun runners using old airliners like that to move product back and forth from south america to africa, off the airways off course, no squawk, and blacked out. It is enough to make one nervous when they are on a southern NAT and have to swing south around weather. I'd be a little angry for the last thirty seconds of my life if I ran into an old airliner hauling a few thousand kilos of product blacked out over the ocean!

We have a local guy in our town that claims he flew 727's in Africa, landing on dirt jungle strips, sometimes with gun fire. That is about all he will tell you.

He is practically a hermit, It is as if he is in hiding here.

Here is an Idea, I'll try and get him to come to the fly-in. Maybe we can get him liquored up around the camp fire and hear some of those stories?

I too subscribe to Air & Space, it has super high quality content, by far my favorite aviation related rag. Well worth the reasonable amount for a subscription....

patrol guy wrote:We have a local guy in our town that claims he flew 727's in Africa, landing on dirt jungle strips, sometimes with gun fire. That is about all he will tell you.

He is practically a hermit, It is as if he is in hiding here.

Here is an Idea, I'll try and get him to come to the fly-in. Maybe we can get him liquored up around the camp fire and hear some of those stories?

Maybe he flew N844AA??? I'd try a few dirty martini's...and let us know the results-

As an aside, is it just me or does every aviation story involving scoundrel-like, unscrupulous and unsavory characters begin with .. " A company based in Florida, ..."

Traffic in the area please advise!

SixTwoLeemer wrote:As an aside, is it just me or does every aviation story involving scoundrel-like, unscrupulous and unsavory characters begin with .. " A company based in Florida, ..."

Traffic in the area please advise!

Yes. The only thing worse is if the company is based in Africa. I spent the first part of the year over there trying not to get to get kidnapped or flown into the ground by my muppet co-pilot. Planes disappear all the time over there. The only reason this one is making the news is because there was an American citizen who went missing and he has a relative who won't keep quiet. Right after the military coup in Niger, I landed and taxied past mortar and heavy machine gun emplacements to the ramp. We learned that a plane possibly carrying a great deal of gold and currency departed on the day of the coup and was also never heard from again.




This is Bamako, Mali, the civilized part of the country. Gao, where the burned out 727 was found is northeast of Bamako and is really in Indian country. If you look about 3/4 of the way up the frame on the left side you'll see the city dump. This is quite a happening spot where many people gather each day to pick through the crap. It's also where the town goats and cattle graze. Beef, it's what's for dinner! That view is from my room in the supposed 5-star digs. Basically like a 7 or 8 story Best Western that needed a remodel about 10 years ago. That's haze in the air from dust and pollution mixed with the high humidity of the jungle. I had to land in that crap at night. Non-radar, non-precision approach to an upslope runway with about 2/3 of the lights not working and a co-pilot who was so far behind the plane he was still back at the hotel.


This is the market. Little stalls covered with corrugated tin where you can presumably get anything from car repairs to an 8 year old girl or an RPG as long as you speak French and have money. And the French is really optional.

Cool stuff Mike. Hope you can share some more stories. I've been to Tunisia and Tanzania...both pretty mellow.
I can only imagine the Congo.

Yeah, Kenya and Tanzania are probably the only places worth visiting over there. I'd like to go back someday for safari. I had a picture of Lake Victoria that I took climbing out of Nairobi, but it looks like ass on the computer. Heated windshields+camera phones don't make for good photography.


Africa, where old airliners go to die. This was one of ours. Leased out of Mauritania, I think. Crew was Eastern European.