A historic film showing the test flights of the Douglas DC-9 prototype

In 1963, Douglas Aircraft Company, creator of the legendary DC-3, began developing a twin-engine aircraft focused on short-distance flights.

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The aircraft was to complement the four-engine DC-8, which had made its first flight in 1958 and was an excellent aircraft that was a sales success. Following the company's nomenclature, the new aircraft was christened DC-9 and was even more successful than its older brother, becoming a classic in many cities like mine, Vigo, which have small airports.

The DC-9 made its maiden flight on 25 February 1965 and entered service that same year. It remained in production until 1982, when it was handed over to two new aircraft series, the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 and MD-90, which shared their simple design, with a narrow fuselage with four rows of seats, stabilizers on the fin and engines located in the tail. The MD-90 series was manufactured until 2000, so the DC-9 and its descendants were in production for 45 years.

Although there are still some DC-9s flying in America and Africa, in the rest of the world these small planes have given way to more modern models, such as the Airbus 320, and also to the most recent models of the DC-9's great competitor, the Boeing 737, an aircraft of which more than 10,000 units have been manufactured. For those nostalgic for those classics of commercial aviation, today Fly By Wire Aviation has published an interesting historical document: the first flights of the DC-9 prototypes.

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Main photo: San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive.