9/18/1959: Delta Air Lines Flies the Douglas DC-8's First Passenger Service

DALLAS — Today, in 1959, the narrow-body airliner Douglas DC-8 enters passenger service with Delta Air Lines (DL), on the same day United Airlines (UA) launches its own DC-8 service across the country.

Pan American World Airways had been first to order the type. In October 1955, Juan Trippe announced an order for 45 jets, 25 of them DC-8s and 20 of them Boeing 707s, for US$269m. United ordered shortly afterward, and it shaped the aircraft: Douglas widened the DC-8's cabin to seat six abreast, and United President William A. Patterson signed for 30 of the jets.

It was DL and UA, though, both moving out of the piston era and watching each other closely, that put the Douglas jet to work first. The DC-8 had made its first flight on May 30, 1958 and, Simple Flying records, was awarded its FAA airworthiness certificate in August 1959, a little under 16 months from first flight to the type's first fare-paying passengers.

Douglas Aircraft Company DC-8-11 N8038D in Douglas house livery on the ramp at Phoenix Sky Harbor in 1959 — Douglas Aircraft Company's own DC-8-11, N8038D, at Phoenix Sky Harbor in 1959. The DC-8 first flew on May 30, 1958. Photo: Jon Proctor/GFDL 1.2

Inaugural Flights

Delta's aircraft was Ship 801, N801E, the 14th DC-8-11 off the Long Beach line and delivered on July 22, 1959. On the morning of September 18, it flew Flight 823 out of New York International Airport at 9:20 a.m. and touched down at Atlanta (ATL) at 11 a.m. Almost everyone still called the place Idlewild; it would take the name of the assassinated president only in December 1963. Captain Floyd Addison had the airplane, with First Officer Jack McMahan and Second Officer Hank Freese, and 119 passengers were aboard, among them the television comedian Morey Amsterdam.

United had taken delivery of its first DC-8 seven weeks before Delta's arrived: N8004U, the eighth airframe built, joined the fleet on June 3, 1959. Its inaugural service was the more demanding flight of the two, a transcontinental run from San Francisco (SFO) to Idlewild. Because of the three-hour time difference between the coasts, though, it is Delta's Atlanta flight that the record books count as the DC-8's first passenger service.

United built up quickly from there, reaching 16 DC-8s by the end of 1959 and eventually flying the Series 10, 20, 30, 50 and 60/70. It had upgraded to the DC-8-71 by the time it retired the type, flying the last DC-8 revenue service on October 31, 1991, from Kona to San Francisco.

Delta, meanwhile, took 42 DC-8s in all, spanning the -11, -12, -33, -51, -61 and -71, and retired its last two DC-8-71s on May 1, 1989, after more than 29 years of DC-8 service.