Lockheed L-100 Hercules

The Lockheed L-100 Hercules is the civilian variant of the C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft, made by Lockheed. Its first flight occurred in 1964 and production ended in 1992 with 114 aircraft delivered, the longer L-100-20 and L-100-30 versions having been developed along the way. The prototype, registered N1130E, first flew on 20 April 1964 on a flight of 25 hours, the longest first flight of a commercial aircraft at the time, the type certificate was awarded on 16 February 1965 and the first delivery went to Continental Air Services on 30 September 1965. The stretched L-100-30 was certificated in October 1970. Alaska operators used the type on gravel and ice runways, notably Interior Airways and its successor Alaska International Air, which flew it to support construction of the Alaska pipeline in the 1970s. An updated variant, the LM-100J, first flew at Marietta, Georgia on 25 May 2017 and entered mass production in 2019. Both can be told from the military C-130 by the absence of side and forward windows under the windshield.