How Ghana Airways Leased A 30-year-old Plane

A DC-10 Lives On in Africa

October 30, 2003 - A venerable DC-10-30 has escaped the scrappers to live on, for at least a time.

Ship 46712/106 started life in 1973 as National's N81NA, then went to Pan Am, LanChile, American (where it became N140AA), TransAero and finally Hawaiian. One of the last Tens parked by HAL, she arrived at Mojave on March 19, 2003. In April, N140AA was bought by BCI Leasing, who have leased it and sister Ten N141AA to Ghana Airways.

Two gentlemen from Ghana Airways and two from the Ghana CAA arrived in Mojave to oversee the resurrection of their new bird, and it was an absolute delight to get to know these folks. From giving them their first experience in an American-style supermarket (the idea of frozen, already-prepared meats were unheard of to them, and a wonderful treat!) to helping them with their records, they were some of the nicest customers we've had. It was also a good lesson in cross-cultural relations...I'd heard of "African time" before, but came to really understand what that means.

The Ghanans were quite desperate for 140 in their fleet, so initially time was going to be saved by only repainting the tail into their colors of red, yellow and green. When they realized, however, that this would look absolutely hideous with the Hawaiian pink stripes, it was then decided to paint the whole fuselage white. AVTEL has a top-notch paint shop, but the DC-10 is simply too big to fit inside the paint bay...and cost was also an issue. They elected to have the crews paint the aircraft with - I kid you not - rollers! That's a lot of aluminum to cover, but when it was done, it actually looked halfway decent...at least from 50 yards or so. The top split rudder panels were left unpainted for balance purposes. The aircraft was re-registered 9G-AND.

When it was finally time to depart, they brought 17 folks to ride home on the plane. Given the heightened security of these times, it took some doing to get this all approved (since the plane was traveling on a ferry permit, to boot). Checking them all in and getting things going took longer than expected (remember, this was running on African time!), and they finally got out of the chocks three hours late. They had wanted to do a post-maintenance test flight, but this was refused by the FAA, and it was made abundantly clear to them that the only way they would be allowed to land back at MHV (or anywhere else short of their initial destination in Baltimore) was if something were seriously broke. When I spoke to the Captain about this, he chuckled in his James Earl Jones-like baritone voice and said, "If the green lights go out, we go."

And go they did. I'll certainly look forward to seeing some of these folks back to pick up N141AA in a few weeks....