Samaritan’s Purse, a humanitarian organization based in North Carolina, has officially closed one of the most remarkable chapters in its aviation history. During a ceremony held on November 14, 2025, at the Airlift Response Center in Greensboro, the organization retired its iconic Douglas DC-8 and simultaneously introduced a new Boeing 767, marking what it describes as “a new era” in its global relief operations.
The DC-8 served as the backbone of the organization’s heavy airlift capabilities for nearly a decade. According to Samaritan’s Purse, the aircraft completed 217 missions and carried more than nine million pounds of humanitarian cargo since 2016. It was the last operational DC-8 registered in the United States and one of only a few remaining examples of its kind still flying anywhere in the world.
The aircraft itself had an exceptionally long and storied career. Built on Christmas Eve 1968, it first flew with Finnair, later served with the French Air Force, and eventually operated for Air Transport International. After being parked for years in the aircraft storage desert at Roswell, New Mexico, Samaritan’s Purse acquired the jet in 2015, carried out a comprehensive overhaul and engine upgrade, and returned it to service. Within the organization, it soon earned the nickname “The Mighty DC-8,” described by crew as an aircraft “resurrected from a desert graveyard.”
Its first major relief mission for the organization took place in 2016, delivering a field hospital, doctors, and medical supplies to Ecuador following a devastating earthquake. In the years that followed, the DC-8 flew humanitarian missions around the globe — from transporting children and their mothers back to Mongolia after life-saving heart surgeries during the pandemic to carrying the milestone 200-millionth Operation Christmas Child shoebox to Poland for a girl displaced by the war in Ukraine. In its final year of operation, it supported relief flights to Israel and delivered critical aid to Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa.
Samaritan’s Purse notes that the aircraft also became a favorite among aviation enthusiasts. Plane spotters gathered to capture its arrivals and departures, and one documentary filmmaker in Cyprus remarked upon entering the cockpit: “Now this is a real airplane. See that one that just took off? All plastic. The DC-8 even smells like a real aircraft.”
Organization president Franklin Graham emphasized the symbolic and practical importance of their aviation program: “Aviation is an incredible tool for Samaritan’s Purse. Every one of our cargo planes says ‘Helping in Jesus’ Name’ across the nose. After a disaster strikes, we want people to know why we are bringing life-saving supplies — that God loves them and they are not forgotten.”
He added that the organization is grateful for the work the DC-8 accomplished and ready for the expanded capability of the 767: “It will allow us to transport far more supplies — faster and more effectively.”
The newly introduced Boeing 767 has already demonstrated its capabilities. On October 24, 2025, it completed its first mission, transporting more than 290,000 packets of supplemental food for women and children in Gaza along with blankets, solar lights, and other necessities. On a subsequent deployment to Jamaica, the 767 carried an entire emergency field hospital in a single flight — including an operating room, intensive care unit, emergency department, maternity ward, laboratory, pharmacy, and blood bank — a scale of airlift the DC-8 could never achieve.
Samaritan’s Purse now operates a fleet of more than 20 aircraft, including two helicopters and a Boeing 757, with the 767 set to become the organization’s primary long-range cargo aircraft.
For flight engineer Joe Proffitt, who completed more than fifty missions on the type, the farewell was deeply personal. He described the DC-8 as “born on Christmas Eve and brought back from a desert grave,” and closed his tribute with the words that echoed throughout the Greensboro hangar as the engines shut down for the final time: “Farewell N782SP … it is bittersweet to say goodbye.”
The ceremony was far more than a formal retirement — it marked the transition from one legendary era of humanitarian aviation to another, more capable and more ambitious, while the legacy of the DC-8 remains firmly etched in the organization’s global relief history.
