Built to last

A BP official was being interviewed on NPR this morning about what they're doing to clean up the big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In the midst of talking about all the high tech goodies they're using he mentioned that they're using C-130s and DC-3s to drop dispersants on the floating oil. The C-130s didn't surprise me since they're still in common usage by the US military. The DC-3, on the other hand, has been around for 75 years (holy crap!!!!!!!!!!) and I didn't think was being flown by anybody but third world cargo fleets.

I'm not sure exactly when they stopped building them, and I realized that anything that's still flying commercially has been heavily refurbished and upgraded, but still, that's some kind of longevity they built into that plane.