Never have understood why the SouthEastern Conference charters an Alligiant MD-83 for select football games. The SEC has all kinds of money & could charter from a first rate airline w/afar better safety record.
Not talking abt the individual schools, this is the SEC office itself. They flew the Alligiant MD-83 through the teeth of a Cat 1 hurricane from College Station to BHM after the Alabama-Texas A&M game after Alabama's Delta charter left almost immediately after the game to beat the worst of the hurricane winds back to Tuscaloosa-they landed during a lull in the storm & departed Tuscaloosa w/in 45 minutes of arriving.
The second incident was after Auburn played @ Arkansas. The Auburn team plane departed just ahead of a very severe line of storms arrived @ XNA but the SEC charter was delayed two, maybe three hours then had to fly South to San Antonio just to get around the line of storms. Playing w/fire IMO.
These are not new AC and if not the same problems will be encountered with them and they are Airbus AC also which will require just as much or more work to keep them flying.