Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrpippy | Hacker News Reader

Some notable airlines have retired their 767 fleets recently. British Airways did a few months ago, a former BA 767 pilot posted a fantastic retrospective: https://tim-the-pilot.co.uk/2018/11/23/a-personal-reflection...

And just this week, Hawaiian Airlines is flying their last 767 flights. More details: http://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=20974085

It looks like their last 767 revenue flight landed in HNL a few hours ago, HA43 SJC-HNL flown by N594HA, a 767-300 originally delivered to Delta in October 1986! An airframe that predates the Macintosh II, still flying. Crazy to think about.

View on HN

I just flew on a 767 with BA a few weeks ago. The cabin definitely felt dated

None of the 76 B52 airframes in service are newer than 55 years old.

That is true, and they’re planned to stay in service (with new engines and radars) until at least 2050! They fly a lot less than a commercial airliner though, with wing surfaces limited to ~30,000 hours. (https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/b-52-life.htm)

Whereas the 767 is rated up to 50,000 cycles. In 2010, the feet leader had 101,000 hours and 31,000 cycles. (https://www.elal.com/en/ELALTech/Documents/Press_Releases/76...)

It's an apples to oranges comparison. The types of air-frames are totally different. A B52 has a wing that flops all over the place the entire fuselage is not pressurized like on a commercial jet.

Also commercial aviation is a lot less hard on equipment than military service because they optimize for comfort and cost whereas the military is going to doing combat readiness stuff regularly and that involves much more stress on the air-frames.

The military does run their stuff pretty hard but at the same time a commercial airliner pretty much runs 24/7 because every minute it's not in the air is a waste of money. Military stuff always has to be ready to go but that doesn't mean it's always actually doing something.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com