Gallery Update: Chasing an Allegiant MD-83 with the Old Livery!

After class got out this morning, I stuck around because an Allegiant MD-83 was flying the Phoenix-Mesa route today. And better yet, it was an MD-83 that was still in the airline's slightly older livery! Utilizing both FlightAware.com and FlightRadar24.com to figure out the aircraft's tail number, I found out that the airframe coming in had a bit of history to it. I'll explain more with the photo captions below, but here's the link:

Provo (PVU) 15

Preview:

Allegiant Air McDonnell Douglas MD-83 (N877GA) arriving on 13 from Phoenix-Mesa as AAY132. Note that this is the previous livery of the airline. Slightly surprised to see that there are some still like this; most likely to be phased out of the Allegiant fleet before it even gets a chance for the repaint. Airframe first delivered as an MD-82 to Korean Air in 1994 as HL7225. Re-registered  in 2001 as N73729 under a brief ownership to Boeing Aircraft Holding Company before going to the now-defunct Canadian low-cost carrier Jetsgo as C-GKLJ in 2002; it was some time around this transition in ownership that the airframe was upgraded to MD-83 standards. Allegiant acquired the airframe in 2005. Even the subtle differences between this livery and the current livery seem pretty obvious!

AAY132 taxiing to the terminal. On March 29, 2007 this very aircraft was involved in an incident at the Orlando Sanford International Airport in Florida. Operating as AAY758 from Pease International Airport in Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Orlando-Sanford, an issue involving the nose landing gear occurred. A hydraulic failure prevented the nose landing gear from deploying and as a result, the aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing in Orlando with the nose gear retracted. Two photos on Airliners.net depict this very incident mentioned. Thankfully, this MD-80 made a safe landing with all aboard surviving. And the airframe damage apparently wasn't substantial so it was clearly repaired before being put back into service. Still, would you fly on this very aircraft (or any aircraft for that matter!) as a passenger if you knew that it was involved in an incident as serious as the one mentioned???