Dover High School graduate Jim Hamilton flew into history this week when he piloted the last commercial flight of a McDonnell Douglas MD-88 in the United States.
Hamilton, a 1978 graduate of Dover High School, piloted the Delta commercial airliner from Washington Dulles to Atlanta on Tuesday, its last flight.
For more than three decades, the MD-88s, which are known among pilots and some aviation enthusiasts as "Mad Dogs," have served as "steady workhorses" for Delta, the company said this week.
Asked if the planes got their nickname from their reputation for taking off like a rocket ship, Hamilton said, "That's a correct statement."
Unlike most commercial airplanes where most of the flying is done automatically, when you're piloting a MD-88 "you have to pay attention all the time," he said.
Hamilton, a captain for Delta Airlines, has been piloting MD-88s for 27 years.
"Flying the MD-88 is similar to driving an older car without any of the new technology. It's kind of like driving a 1985 Chevy pickup truck as opposed to a brand new Lexus," Hamilton said during an interview this week. "In today's new aircraft a lot of things are taken care of automatically. In an older plane like this ... there's a lot of manual control."
Hamilton, who piloted F-4 Phantom fighter jets when he served in the U.S. Air Force after he graduated from college, said flying MD-88s "made it a lot more fun than having a lot of things done automatically for you."
The aircraft earned its reputation for powering through takeoffs, Hamilton said.
"It climbs really well coming off the runway. That gave you a sense of a security if anything ever happened, it was always going to take care of you," he said. "It was a powerful beast."
Flying the planes for Delta "also allows you to keep your flying skills," he said.
"It's the best office job in the world. I've got the best set of windows there are," he said about the cockpit of the MD-88. "It's exhilarating every time you takeoff and it's exhilarating every time you land."
Because of the popularity of making an aircraft's final flight, Delta Airlines quickly sold out all the tickets it offered for Hamilton's flight from Dulles to Atlanta.
Delta had intended to keep using the MD 88s through the end of the year, but decided to retire them early after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, he said.
"We're the oldest planes in the fleet and our gas mileage is not as good as some of the other planes," Hamilton said.
He was surprised by the celebratory atmosphere during the last flight.
"I'm coming up on 60 and I don't understand all the social media platforms but apparently someone blogged about it being the last flight," he said.
When the plane landed in Atlanta, he was "amazed" as passengers hung around for another 45 minutes, "taking pictures of anything that had to do with the airliner."
Passengers also used Sharpies to write messages on the overhead baggage bins.
"Initially it was kind of shocking as I walked through the cabin but then it was very rewarding to see a group of people so interested in something I was doing," he said.
The experience was also "so bittersweet," knowing it was going to be his last time piloting the MD-88.
His plane's last stop was a Delta facility in Arkansas, Hamilton said.
"To pull the last plane up and see other MD 88s that are being stripped, including some of them that looked derelict, it was very sad," he said.
Since the final flight, he's heard from a lot of people who saw a report about it on CNN.
"My wife's active on Facebook and we've seen a lot of stuff coming through from folks we haven't heard from in years," Hamilton said. "It's been a lot of fun."
Growing up in Dover, Hamilton "used to live under the flight path of the Pease Air Force Base," he said. "I could look outside every day and see planes. I think that's where I got the idea to become a pilot."
Asked about the difference between flying an F-4 Phantom fighter jet and a commercial passenger plane, he said, "in the fighter we would fly very low altitudes of between 100 to 500 feet at 500 miles an hour."
"It's the exact opposite of flying passengers when you're flying at 35,000 feet at maybe 300 miles an hour," he said.
He now lives with his family outside Atlanta, and one of his sons is also a pilot for Delta.
Hamilton says he's enjoyed living down South, but his "first choice would be put me back n Dover, New Hampshire."
"Unfortunately, that's not where I fly," he said.
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