I adjusted the captain’s seat a final time and exhaled a hushed whistle. My eyes darted across the DC-9’s cluttered instrument panel. Endless dials and knobs were embedded in the gray metal. A seasoned DC-9 pilot would view the layout as a smile from an old friend. I felt like I was shaking hands with a stranger that had been crisscrossing the skies for decades. When the DC-9 first flew in 1965, I wasn’t even a blip on its green-and-black radar screen. The aircraft’s impressive production run was nearly over by the time I was born.
This meeting between old and (somewhat) young continued as I reached up to the overhead panel, my fingers brushing against the DC-9’s beefy switches and square blue lights. The faded white labels etched into the blackness around them were a timeless guide to operating this classic.
