The retirement of the final DC-8 marks the top of US DC-8 operations and the start of a brand new chapter for Samaritan’s Purse because it expands its capabilities with a contemporary, long-range freighter.
Samaritan’s Purse marked the top of an aviation period on Friday, 14 November 2025, throughout a mixed retirement and dedication ceremony on the group’s Airlift Response Middle in Greensboro, North Carolina.
The religion-based humanitarian and international aid group formally retired its McDonnell Douglas DC-8, the final remaining US-registered DC-8 nonetheless in service, whereas dedicating a newly refurbished Boeing 767 that may now take its place because the group’s major heavy-lift plane.
The second carried large weight for each aviation historical past and humanitarian aid work. For almost a decade, the Samaritan’s Purse DC-8, registration N782SP, served as one of the crucial succesful and reliable belongings within the group’s international catastrophe response efforts. Its retirement marks the top of a service life that spanned nearly 57 years and helped propel the humanitarian fleet into a brand new period of expanded functionality.
A Humanitarian Workhorse That Outlined a Decade of Aid
Since buying the plane in 2015, Samaritan’s Purse has relied on N782SP as its flagship catastrophe response plane. Over the course of a decade, the DC-8 carried greater than 9 million kilos of aid provides throughout 217 humanitarian missions.
Its first mission got here in 2016, lower than 24 hours after receiving its remaining FAA sign-off, when it was launched to Ecuador following a 7.8-magnitude earthquake.
Its remaining task occurred on 3 November 2025, delivering assist to Kingston, Jamaica, after Hurricane Melissa struck the island nation as a Class 5 monster.
N782SP has a narrative that spans continents and careers. Rolling off the Douglas meeting line in Lengthy Seashore as airframe quantity 427 of 554 on 24 December 1968, it started its profession with Finnair earlier than being offered to the French Air Drive, which upgraded the plane from a DC-8-62 to a DC-8-72 with extra environment friendly CFM-56 engines. Later, it joined Air Transport Worldwide in Ohio, the place it was transformed right into a combi configuration that allowed a mixture of cargo and personnel. When its cargo profession got here to an finish, it was saved in Roswell, New Mexico, till Samaritan’s Purse acquired it and returned it to service in 2015.
At present, the plane has logged almost 100,000 flight hours, a determine that displays each the sturdiness of the DC-8 design and the many years when the kind dominated cargo operations worldwide. Many cargo pilots recall a time when DC-8s have been a typical sight throughout the trade, at the same time as passenger airways moved to new widebody plane. By the early 2000s the kind had grow to be more and more uncommon, and by 2020, solely two remained operational in the USA: the NASA analysis plane and the Samaritan’s Purse freighter.
With NASA’s retirement of its airframe in April 2024, N782SP grew to become the ultimate lively US-registered DC-8.
For a faith-based humanitarian group, the plane’s Christmas Eve manufacturing date additionally carries symbolic which means. As one member of the aviation staff put it, the plane’s birthday feels becoming for a platform that has grow to be a instrument for serving individuals in disaster in Jesus’ identify.
A New Period Begins with the Boeing 767
Standing beside the retired DC-8 through the ceremony was its successor, a newly devoted Boeing 767-300F registered N367SP. The 20-year-old freighter, MSN 33510, was delivered new to All Nippon Airways in 2006 and later joined the Qantas Freight fleet in 2011. Samaritan’s Purse bought the plane in February 2025 and staged it at Phoenix Goodyear Airport earlier than ferrying it in July to the group’s Mission Aviation Companies headquarters at Piedmont Triad Worldwide Airport (GSO) in Greensboro.
The 767 entered service on 25 October 2025 with an inaugural mission to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport (TLV), delivering life-saving provides for ladies and kids in Gaza. Loaded with 290,000 packets of supplementary meals together with blankets, photo voltaic lights, and different pressing objects, the flight demonstrated the dramatic enhance in carrying capability the 767 brings to the group. Shortly afterward, the plane flew aid missions to Jamaica within the wake of Hurricane Melissa, and it has already made a number of return journeys.
One of many largest benefits of the 767 is its capability to airlift the Samaritan’s Purse Emergency Area Hospital in a single flight. The transportable hospital consists of an working room, intensive care unit, emergency room, obstetric ward, laboratory, pharmacy, and blood financial institution. Beforehand, transporting the total hospital required a number of plane or journeys. With the 767, the group can now reply extra rapidly and extra successfully to large-scale disasters.
The flagships of the Samaritan’s Purse fleet are actually the Boeing 757 and the newly commissioned 767. Between the 757, 767, and DC-8, Samaritan’s Purse has accomplished seven aid missions to Jamaica.
Persevering with the Mission
As with each plane within the Samaritan’s Purse fleet, each the retiring DC-8 and the brand new 767 carry the group’s message on the nostril: Serving to in Jesus’ Title.
We do all the pieces in Jesus’ Title.
Franklin Graham | President, Samaritan’s Purse
“We do all the pieces in Jesus’ Title,” mentioned Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham. “We wish our focus to all the time be on Christ, so we put that on the nostril and the cross on the tail. We go in Jesus’ Title. Aviation is an unimaginable instrument for Samaritan’s Purse. Each one among our cargo planes says ‘Serving to in Jesus’ Title’ proper throughout the nostril of the plane.
After a catastrophe strikes, we wish individuals to know why we’re bringing life-saving provides. We wish them to know that God loves them and they aren’t forgotten. As we retire the DC-8, we’re grateful to God for the 767 taking its place. It can permit us to move much more provides, sooner and extra successfully, and can proceed the work of bringing the hope of the Gospel to individuals all over the world.”
The DC-8’s Closing Footprints Across the World
Whereas N782SP was the final lively US-registered DC-8, no less than two airframes stay on the books internationally.
The very best-documented instance is OB-2231-P, a Peruvian-registered DC-8-60/70 operated by Skybus Jet Cargo. The 56-year-old freighter, initially delivered to Air Canada in 1970, at the moment flies routes between the USA, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. Latest flights present the plane working between Miami Worldwide Airport (MIA) and Toussaint Louverture Worldwide Airport (PAP) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Skybus additionally owns one other DC-8 that’s inactive and saved in Kingman Airport (IGM) in Arizona.
One extra plane, a DC-8 operated by Trans Air Cargo Service within the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is listed as lively below registration 9S-AJO. Its operational standing is unclear, and up to date flight exercise is troublesome to substantiate.
If the Congo plane is inactive, the Skybus freighter stands out as the remaining operational DC-8 wherever on the planet. Even when each stay flying, the quantity has dwindled from 5 lively examples simply 4 years in the past to solely a pair immediately.
The Finish of One Period and the Begin of One other
The retirement of N782SP closes a 66-year chapter that started in 1959, when the DC-8 first entered service. Over that span, 556 airframes have been constructed, and the kind served industrial airways, governments, scientists, cargo carriers, and humanitarian organizations. For Samaritan’s Purse, the DC-8 was greater than an airplane. It was a lifeline that related individuals in disaster with important assets, together with meals, water, medication, shelter, and hope.
With the 767 now taking up that position, the mission will transfer ahead with larger capability and a wider attain. The plane that Samaritan’s Purse affectionately referred to as the “Mighty DC-8” has touched down for the final time, however the lives it uplifted and the hope it delivered will stay woven into the group’s story perpetually.
