Nike Air Flight 89: now on NIKEiD

Copped for $50
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From where? Definitely would love to pick a pair at $50.
 

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Can someone explain what's going on here? Picture is from 1992. Don't recall this colorway ever.


I have no idea on that pair at first, but ... maybe I do?

I had a pair of white Air Flight 89s around probably ‘92 as well. I was in 9th or 10th grade. Always wanted 89s but I was a kid and had just got into sneakers with the Jordan IV in 8th grade toward the end of their run. Anyway, a year or two later around Easter if I remember, I was out shopping with my mom. Randomly walked into a Footlocker and, making no sense, there was a pair of Flight 89s on the shelf. Long before retro releases began, obviously. I begged her for them—I didn’t grow up just getting loads of shoes at all—and somehow she agreed.

Here’s the thing: they were white with volt-ish or electric green plastic lace locks or whatever you want to call them. With black piping on the upper. I think it was black, anyway. It’s been so long, I can’t remember if the midsole top half was black or not. Same goes for the black part of the outsole toe bumper.

Whether that pair is the same pair or not, point is, every once in a while, random stuff would just pop up out of nowhere and then be gone. No one really tracked it back then. The pair I had, I’ve never seen a picture of or ever referenced. Not once in 30 years of doing this. Until now, perhaps. I truly can’t say if that pair is the exact one I had, but it very well might be.
 
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Great info/insight rainking rainking , thanks! :emoji_thumbsup:

The pic was also posted by someone else in the Celebs Rocking Heat thread and ninjahood ninjahood chimed in with the following...

those were a model nike pumped out to recycle da 89 platform/tooling. da sole collector book got em.

im scrambling now... they were take down models that nike made to keep reusing da 89 sole and were a flight wit da script....my next best guess is its a late release is that nike didn't stop making flight 89's in 89...kinda like how air max 95's were still being made in 1997 but we didn't call em "a retro release" ya dig? i remember a monochromatic air flight 89 that came out 1991-1992 and they had something extra on da tongue..

It's just all strange that being as obsessed with kicks as I am, particularly OG/early era Flight 89's that I've never seen a colorway similar.

Smaller chance, but the plastic lace locks/holders could also just be altered/shopped to look neon?
 
Great info/insight rainking rainking , thanks! :emoji_thumbsup:

The pic was also posted by someone else in the Celebs Rocking Heat thread and ninjahood ninjahood chimed in with the following...





It's just all strange that being as obsessed with kicks as I am, particularly OG/early era Flight 89's that I've never seen a colorway similar.

Smaller chance, but the plastic lace locks/holders could also just be altered/shopped to look neon?

I doubt it photoshopped, the neon on the shoes match the shirt.

I probably saw that colorway before but never paid attention to it.
 
Has anyone purchased anything off of Google shopping? They have the white/red joints for $67 and it says “Sold by Nike.” But when I go to the Nike app they’re still listed at $105.
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7574B0B7-D579-44FA-976C-015D054A6F27.jpeg
 
Great info/insight rainking rainking , thanks! :emoji_thumbsup:

The pic was also posted by someone else in the Celebs Rocking Heat thread and ninjahood ninjahood chimed in with the following...





It's just all strange that being as obsessed with kicks as I am, particularly OG/early era Flight 89's that I've never seen a colorway similar.

Smaller chance, but the plastic lace locks/holders could also just be altered/shopped to look neon?
ninjahood ninjahood might be right; I have the Sole Provider book if that's the one he's talking about. It's at my place, though, and I'm at my girl's so can't pull it from the shelf at the moment. To my eyes, though, those look like Flight 89s, not a spinoff model. But I do think I know which shoe he is talking about, I can picture it.

Regardless, the story I told remains true. I got a pair of white Flight 89s in the spring of '91 or '92. Not only were the plastic eyelets volt or whatever, but the Flight script on the tongue was volt as well, and I'm pretty sure the Nike Air on the heel was, too. It's unusual for me that I can't for sure remember the other trim colors; it's almost like that whole shoe and me owning it was a ghost. I'm almost positive the midsole top was black, just because I can't imagine what other color it would have been. The thing that's throwing me is, I don't think the toe had that black portion, I want to say it was gray. But I really don't know anymore.

But anyway, like I said, I know for a fact that from time to time--and it was really rare, for sure--something like that release I stumbled upon that day would happen. I never saw one other person wearing that colorway. Making it even stranger, the Footlocker I got them from was located in an affluent, small downtown neighborhood shopping district in the Detroit suburbs near where I grew up. It wasn't the type of market/region/neighborhood that you'd expect a limited-run, quickstrike-like pre-retro era retro release to turn up at. Like, not at all. But whatever the true story is with the pair in the photo, the pair I had was definitely real and definitely a new release at the time, not old stock. I'm not surprised there are some pairs/colorways we've never seen or heard of before ... I had my pair and still have never seen it once since back then. It was the pre-internet etc era, so who really knows how often or how many such shoes happened and just were sent to random markets or stores once and then disappeared again. It's fascinating, in a shoe nerd way LOL
 
ninjahood ninjahood might be right; I have the Sole Provider book if that's the one he's talking about. It's at my place, though, and I'm at my girl's so can't pull it from the shelf at the moment. To my eyes, though, those look like Flight 89s, not a spinoff model. But I do think I know which shoe he is talking about, I can picture it.

Regardless, the story I told remains true. I got a pair of white Flight 89s in the spring of '91 or '92. Not only were the plastic eyelets volt or whatever, but the Flight script on the tongue was volt as well, and I'm pretty sure the Nike Air on the heel was, too. It's unusual for me that I can't for sure remember the other trim colors; it's almost like that whole shoe and me owning it was a ghost. I'm almost positive the midsole top was black, just because I can't imagine what other color it would have been. The thing that's throwing me is, I don't think the toe had that black portion, I want to say it was gray. But I really don't know anymore.

But anyway, like I said, I know for a fact that from time to time--and it was really rare, for sure--something like that release I stumbled upon that day would happen. I never saw one other person wearing that colorway. Making it even stranger, the Footlocker I got them from was located in an affluent, small downtown neighborhood shopping district in the Detroit suburbs near where I grew up. It wasn't the type of market/region/neighborhood that you'd expect a limited-run, quickstrike-like pre-retro era retro release to turn up at. Like, not at all. But whatever the true story is with the pair in the photo, the pair I had was definitely real and definitely a new release at the time, not old stock. I'm not surprised there are some pairs/colorways we've never seen or heard of before ... I had my pair and still have never seen it once since back then. It was the pre-internet etc era, so who really knows how often or how many such shoes happened and just were sent to random markets or stores once and then disappeared again. It's fascinating, in a shoe nerd way LOL


Fascinating man, thank you for your insight/experience.

trethousandgt trethousandgt I feel like you might have some insight on this for some reason. Forgive me if I'm thinking of someone else.
 
Fascinating man, thank you for your insight/experience.

trethousandgt trethousandgt I feel like you might have some insight on this for some reason. Forgive me if I'm thinking of someone else.
Sometimes when I look back at stuff like this now, it seems that, unnoticed by all of us at the time, Nike started dipping its toe into the retro market earlier than is usually talked about. I'm sure some others remember ... during the '93 Finals on NBC, out of nowhere Nike aired some of the original Air Jordan III commercials. I used to record all of the games back then and had the tapes for 20-plus years afterward, so I know I'm not imagining this LOL. I remember watching Bulls vs Suns when they came on and saying, uhhh, what? Why are they showing these commercials now? A year later, they retroed the IIIs. It didn't even register to me at the time, but it's obvious now that a lot of this stuff was calculated way ahead of time. Though I do wonder why they ran the commercials that far in advance of re-releasing the shoes. Another fascinating Nike mystery :lol:
 
Man.....great memories. I remember walkin into Footlocker end of '92 (?) and seein these exact ones and being like "whoa, how are these back?" :lol:


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Thought I was nuts for being one of the few who want those back. Bought a pair back then and drove them ****s into the ground.
 
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