I Flew on the World's OLDEST Boeing 737. Here's What Happened...

Video from the channel Noel Philips about Boeing 737, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 15:30. Language: English. Video type: Onboard.

The author takes a scheduled Venezolana flight from Porlamar, on Margarita Island, to Caracas aboard a Boeing 737-200 built in 1978. He presents it as the oldest 737 still in regular passenger service. The video shows the trip to the airport, check-in with long queues, boarding, takeoff, about 40 minutes of flight at 24,000 feet and the landing in Caracas.

The seats have the same design as Southwest Airlines', although the aircraft never flew for that airline. They are worn, leaving little legroom, the windows are scratched and water drips from the air vents. The video shows the JT8D engines, designed in the 1960s, and fluid dripping under one of them on the ground.

The aircraft was delivered new to Frontier Airlines in 1978, passed to United Airlines in 1985 and arrived in Venezuela in 2011. Only 30 units of the first model, the 737-100, were ever built. The stretched 737-200 was first delivered to United in 1968, and more than 1,100 were built. Today around 50 remain in service, almost all cargo or charter. According to the video, only four still fly regular passenger services: one in Zimbabwe, one in Somalia and two in Venezuela, with Avior and Venezolana. The author recalls first flying on a British Airways 737-200 in 1997 and on Air Inuit's combi aircraft in Canada in 2021.