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Bangladesh

The DC-10 makes its final scheduled passenger flight

Ben Mutzabaugh
USA TODAY
Aviation enthusiasts snap photos of a Biman Bangladesh Airlines DC-10 before the plane makes its final passenger flight.

The DC-10 has been flying passengers on commercial flights since 1971, but that run has now come to an end.

Biman Bangladesh Airlines had been the world's last passenger airline to use the three-engine widebody for regularly scheduled passenger flights. But the carrier operated its last inter-city DC-10 passenger flight on Thursday, flying the jet from its base in Dhaka, Bangladesh, to Birmingham, England, with a refueling stop in Kuwait City.

Airchive.com correspondent Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren was on the final flight. He writes "thirty or so people from around the world sat scattered throughout the otherwise empty jet. Trading everything from memorabilia to memories, these are the truly hard-core aviation geeks. The type who can correctly ID a DC-10-10 from a DC-10-30 at a thousand-yard glance, or who can talk in detail about the history of an airline with more accuracy than most of its employees."

Next up for the Biman's last DC-10? Biman will fly several scenic "farewell tour" flights around Birmingham this week, with the carrier selling tickets for the flights. The carrier also has used the last flight as an attempt to drum up attention on its modernization efforts.

Indeed, one observer noted via Qatar's Gulf Times that "with scant publicity over the years, the state-owned carrier is milking (the) PR surrounding the departure of the last DC10 ."

Regardless, Biman's final passenger flight on the DC-10 ends an era for passenger airline service, a move that comes 43 years after the aircraft made its maiden flight with paying passengers when American Airlines flew it between Los Angeles and Chicago on Aug. 5, 1971.

Capt. Shoaib Chowdhury, a 22-year veteran of Biman Bangladesh, was in the cockpit for the final flight. He reflected on the occasion to Airchive.com's Dwyer-Lindgren.

"I feel very proud; this is a great opportunity to fly the last commercial DC-10 flight," Chowdhury says. "The DC-10 is a wonderful…robust aircraft. This is the biggest aircraft I've flown in my career ... my first wide-body. It gave me confidence as a captain. I will miss it."

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