By 1972, the year that Delta acquired Northeast Airlines, it had risen to the mid-rank of the US Trunk majors, but whereas its fellows together operated 412 Boeing 727-100s and 256 Boeing 727-200s (a staggering 35% of the entire fleet of the 12 Trunks and Pan Am) Delta flew precisely zero of the popular trijet. That was going to change quickly as Northeast just over 50% of the NE fleet was made up of the type.
By 1972 Delta was placed firmly in the number 5 position in terms of fleet size of the US trunks. It was miles behind the big four (American, Eastern TWA and United), but with 142 aircraft it was some way ahead of the next biggest, Northwest (albeit NW’s fleet included 16 747s and 33 707-320s).
Obviously Delta’s biggest competitor was Eastern Air Lines, with which it shared Atlanta. Eastern had 247 aircraft and 110 of these were 727s. Delta’s fleet was based mostly around the Douglas DC-9, with 77 in service. The next biggest aircraft in its fleet were the fast but thirsty Convair 880s, of which it still flew 16.
On 29 March 1972 Delta finally placed an order for the 727 – ordering 14 of the latest 727-200 Advanced model with a further 14 options. The first of these 727-232Advs would arrive in January 1973 and as part of the deal the entire CV-880 fleet, plus 8 DC-8-33s would be traded in to Boeing. However, by a twist of fate these would not be the first 727s wearing the Widget.
The Northeast fleet consisted of a mix of Fairchild-Hiller FH-227s, Douglas DC-9s and Boeing 727s. The latter were split into 8 727-95s and 13 727-295s. Initially Northeast’s fleet was quickly touched up with a small Delta widget near the nose, but quickly the aircraft would be repainted into the full Delta scheme even, if like the FH-227s, they weren’t going to stay around long.
Delta’s plan initially was to only keep the Northeast 727-295s and sell all the rest, including the 727-95s. In fact, this is exactly what they began to do with 3 of the 8 being sold to VARIG of Brasil in March 1973 (N1637 and N1638) and February 1974 (N1634).
That left only 5 727-95s with Delta, but the new owner began to see their value and the immediate sale of further frames was shelved. Instead they found good usage on routes such as Atlanta-Dallas-San Diego. They outlasted all the ex-Northeast DC-9-30s (sold in 1974-75) and took part in the 1976 US Bicentennial celebrations when most of them were repainted with the ‘We The People’ Bicentennial Widget. For more on the Bicentennial liveries see:
