Meet the 47-year-old jet still carrying fare-paying passengers

While Airbus wound down the A380 and Boeing prepared to close the 747 line, one question was easy to overlook: what is the single oldest airliner still carrying passengers? The answer in 2021 was not a jumbo at all. It was a narrow-body Boeing 737 that first flew in 1974 — about 47 years old, and still in the schedule.

That aircraft is C-GNLK, a Boeing 737-200 operated by Canada's Nolinor Aviation. Records at airfleets.net date its first flight to 9 May 1974, which made it roughly 47.2 years old when this was measured at the end of May 2021. It was the 356th 737-200 to leave Boeing's Renton line, entered service with Dutch carrier Transavia, and has changed hands more than twenty times since. It is not merely the oldest 737 flying — it is the oldest jetliner in commercial operation anywhere in the world.

Set that against the fleet most travellers picture. Typical airline fleets average only around 10 to 12 years old, so a 47-year-old jet is a genuine outlier. A sister analysis found that the plane on an average scheduled flight is often newer than the car in the driveway. The record-holder is the exception that proves the rule.

Why a 1974 jet is still working

The 737-200's longevity is not sentiment; it is engineering. The type is rugged, mechanically simple and cheap to keep airworthy relative to a modern fly-by-wire jet. Crucially, it can be fitted with a "gravel kit" that lets it operate from unpaved runways, which is precisely what remote charter and cargo routes across northern Canada demand. Nolinor built a business on exactly this niche, and as of late 2025 was the world's largest 737-200 operator, flying about eight of the roughly forty still in service worldwide.

The oldest airliner in the sky is not a pampered flagship. It is a 1974 workhorse that keeps flying because nothing newer does its job as cheaply.

The oldest of every major type

Looking one aircraft deep into each major type — the single oldest example of the model still recorded as flying in mid-2021 — shows how far the 737 stands apart. Using production lists at airfleets.net and cross-checking recent flights on Flightradar24, the oldest active examples of the big families lined up like this at 31 May 2021:

Two patterns stand out. The 737 is a full decade older than its nearest rival, thanks to that fleet of hard-working -200s. And the wide-bodies age quickly: old 747s and A300s appear to leave service comparatively fast, so the oldest still flying were only in their mid-thirties, not their forties.

The 747's slow goodbye

The jumbo makes the point sharply. The oldest 747 still recorded as active in 2021 was a converted freighter that first flew in 1984 — about 37 years old — not a passenger aircraft. Passenger 747s were already thinning out fast: only six airlines still flew them in scheduled passenger service that year, namely Lufthansa, Air China, Korean Air, Air India, Mahan Air and Asiana, down from more than twenty before the pandemic.

The backdrop was an era ending. Boeing confirmed it would close the 747 line, and the final example — a 747-8 freighter for Atlas Air — was handed over on 31 January 2023, after 1,574 had been built over a 54-year run that began in 1967. Airbus had already retired its own superjumbo dream: the last of 251 A380s was delivered to Emirates on 16 December 2021, fourteen years after the type entered service in 2007.

Did the record hold?

Fleets change fast, so a snapshot like this ages quickly — which makes what happened next notable. The 1974 Boeing 737 did not retire. C-GNLK was still flying in 2025, past its 51st year, and remained the oldest jetliner in commercial operation. The passenger 747, meanwhile, kept fading: by 2026 only a small group of carriers — Lufthansa, Korean Air, Air China and Russia's Rossiya — were still flying them for passengers at all.

So the honest answer to "how old is the plane you are flying on?" is almost always reassuring: probably a decade old, give or take. But somewhere out there, a 1974 narrow-body is still turning up for work — proof that in aviation, being old is less about the year on the data plate than about whether there is still a job only you can do.

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