…that this big ol’ airliner carried me to The New World, in a literal as well as figurative sense. If I recall correctly, the plane left Amsterdam Schiphol at around 11:00 am, arriving in Detroit at 2:30 pm. A non stop flight. Eight short hours from a closed in, tightly controlled society with (still) old fashioned norms to a world where newness and non conformity seemed to be the thing of the day.
The plane itself, a Douglas DC-8 55F, serial no 45824/267, shown here with the registration number PH-MAS, was delivered to Overseas National Airlines (ONA) in June of 1966. It was then sold to Martin’s Air Charter (or Martinair) in October of 1968. Martinair then used it until early 1977 when it was sold back to the manufacturer Douglas Aircraft. After that, it was used by a variety of airlines, the last one being a Venezuelan outfit called Avianco, who used it as a freighter. It was last spotted in 2001 sitting at Miami International Airport in something called ‘Corrosion Corner’, likely an area used to store planes for stripping parts off them.
My picture above is actually a composite of two, taken with my Rollei Magic, which I had acquired a few months before the start of this trip. Second hand, of course. Unfortunately, I lost that camera on a later plane light in November of 1972. Color photography was still somewhat rare back then, because it was expensive. This shows the old style MAC livery colors very well. As far as I can tell, this is the oldest picture of PH-MAS on the web.
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