Flying to Zanzibar.

[Mindful]

I took a flight across Tanzania with the relatively unknown Flightlink Airlines of Tanzania on a 30 year old Embraer 120, which left me wondering - how is this plane still flying!

 

[ReinyDays]

Good maintenance ... B-52's are over 50 years old now and still our front-line heavy bomber ...

 

[Sunni Man]

Good maintenance ... B-52's are over 50 years old now and still our front-line heavy bomber ...

That's because the US military has an almost unlimited budget to keep the B-52's in the air.
Your flirting with death flying on some low budget podunk African airline with barefoot witch doctors as their aircraft maintenance personnel. ...

 

[ReinyDays]

That's because the US military has an almost unlimited budget to keep the B-52's in the air.
Your flirting with death flying on some low budget podunk African airline with barefoot witch doctors as their aircraft maintenance personnel. ...

Plus the airframe itself was well built to begin with ... much of that budget was upgrades ... the newest most advanced weaponry cost top dollars ... there's nothing wrong with the EMB 120 ... should last 30 years and beyond ...

I think you'd be flirting with death walking across Tanzania ... and of course driving is always riskier everyplace in the world ... but if you have statistics, let's see them ...

 

[Moonglow]

I do hope you took yer prepper supplies with you...

 

[Gabe Lackmann]

That's because the US military has an almost unlimited budget to keep the B-52's in the air.

Absolutely.

The one thing I never heard in 25 years with the USAF

"Oh, that's too much."

I worked some shit heaps too!

B-1's, C-5's...good lord.

As for age.

When I was stationed at Yokota in 2015 we still had 135's coming through that were manufactured in 1959.

These were seven and eight ship extender deployments used for PACAF ops in the ROK.

Always a few hard broke...stuck on the ground long after the EX ended.

 

[AMart]

That plane is fine if it is well maintained. Although they are getting retired with frequency American fleets still use older MD90's, 737s, and various Embraers.

 

[Mindful]

I’ve heard of planes in Nigeria running out of fuel “up there”. Due to miscalculations of litres required.

 

[AMart]

I’ve heard of planes in Nigeria running out of fuel “up there”. Due to miscalculations of litres required.

Have not heard of that. The most famous of these would be the Gimi Glider. That was an Air Canada flight in 1983 that ran out of fuel mid flight and landed at a former air base converted into a drag strip. That pilot and first officer did one hell of a job calculating how fast they were descending and how miles they could go. The only control they had was from a RAT,

 

[Colin norris]

I took a flight across Tanzania with the relatively unknown Flightlink Airlines of Tanzania on a 30 year old Embraer 120, which left me wondering - how is this plane still flying!

747s are older than that.