Air Ainu McDonnel Douglas MD-81 (JA8898)

Air Ainu is a domestic airline based out of New Chitose Airport. The airline is named after the Ainu people who live in the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido, and other nearby lands. This airline was founded in 1998 with 4 ex Air Fuji McDonnel Douglas MD-81s and 5 new Bombardier Q200s. The MD-81 fleet operated from the very beginning of this airline in 1998 all they way until 2015. They were mostly deployed on longer and higher demand flights to Tokyo Haneda, Osaka Itami, while occasionally flying within Hokkaido, mostly to Hakodate and Asahikawa. Meanwhile, the Q200 turboprops were deployed on primarily inter Hokkaido routes. This included destinations like Kushiro, Monbetsu, Wakkanai, and more. None of the aircraft that were around at the airline's foundation are flying with Air Ainu anymore, and have since been replaced with 737-800s and ATR42-600s. They also operate 2 767-300ERs for the extremely lucrative CTS-HND route, as well as international charter flights every few months.
This MD-81 in particular is registered as JA8898, and was originally delivered to the defunct American airline Southeast Express as N957SE in April 1987, however, Southeast Express went bust less than a year later, and was sold to Air Fuji as JA8898. With the new Airbus A320s being delivered to Air Fuji, they eventually disposed the aircraft to Air Ainu in 1997. It operated Air Ainu's first flight from New Chitose to Hakodate in September 1998. It flew with them for another 16 years before being retired in 2014 and scrapped at Roswell. The only incident an Air Ainu flight has ever experienced was in January 2010, when a stowaway was discovered in the wheel well of an MD-81 registered JA8893 after landing at Chitose from Vladivostok. The stowaway was critically injured, but miraculously they made a full recovery 3 months later.

Livery: Standard (1998-2010)