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Comment by barake | Hacker News Reader

It always blew my mind how long the F-14 was in service - they were present at the American evacuation from Saigon in 1975.

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While a respectable career, its not that remarkably long. A-10 for example was operational in late 70's and it's still in service. On the other hand Tomcats successor F/A-18 Hornet was already introduced in mid-80's. Compare that to F-15 Eagle, which was also introduced in late 70's and its successor, F-22 Raptor, introduced in 2005. And the Eagle is supposed to last to at least 2025, according to Wikipedia.

Throwing expensive toys away if they work is bit silly, that's why phasing operational stuff out takes so long. Especially if you account for the need to retrain all your people, not just the pilots, but service crew as well.

Not to mention that since the collapse of the Soviets, the F15 is perfectly competitive with anything it's likely to meet in the air in the foreseeable future.

That goes for all the other major Western fighters too. The ONLY reason we're buying Eurofighter Typhoons is contractual obligation. Tornadoes (more-or-less a British equivalent to the Tomcat) are still perfectly good. If there were worries about the airframes we should have simply spun the production lines back up and made more of the proven design.

As a fighter, definitely.

When you compare it to other larger military aircraft, it doesn't seem very long at all. The B52 has been in active service since 1955. The A-10 was introduced in 1977 and isn't expected to be replaced until nearly 2030.

And the Douglas DC-4 was introduced in the 1930s and there are still a few flying around!

I think you mean the DC-3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC-3

The DC-4 was also introduced in the 1930s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_DC-4

In active service in the armed forces, or private/commercial?

All private, I think. This one flies right over our office several times a week: http://archives.californiaaviation.org/ganews/msg09194.html .

Most are privately owned or with historical flights, but some do remain in military service. For instance, the Salvadoran Air Force operates 2 near-original C-47Ds and a few Basler BT-67s and the South African Air Force has 10 C-47TPs (converted to turboprop power with PT-6A engines) which are used in the maritime patrol, light transport and EW roles.

The KC-135 is also an old plane that is still in active service (started ops in 1957 and was based on the prototype aircraft that eventually became the Boeing 707..)

The B52 is intended to be in service until 2040 - long enough for the great-great-grandchildren of the original pilots to be flying it!

Sure do hope they find a way to extend that to 2055!

And the C-130 since 1956, in pretty much continuous production the whole time as well.

Grew up about 5 miles from the plant in Marietta Ga.

The Nimrod operated by the RAF is basically the Comet, world's first jet airliner in 1949.

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