A Heritage of Convair 880 and 990 Plane Mishaps

While the Convair 880’s and 990’s accident background can be viewed as comprehensive, specially in ratio to the number that entered service, several features should really be viewed as. In the 15-year time period in between 1960, the type’s year of company entry, to 1974, there ended up seven fatal mishaps. Four involved the CV-990A, whose production full was only a third of the complete program’s. But the first incident did not come about until finally the primary CV-880 experienced plied the skies, in divergent nations and climactic situations, for seven many years.

Fatalities for each plane also must be deemed-from a minimal of one particular to a large of 155. Three mishaps took location all through the takeoff stage and two through the cruise period, but they had been the outcome of intentionally planted explosive equipment and not of airframe or powerplant deficiency or design flaw. Numerous, because of only to fate, transpired in clusters, only times aside.

“The 880 attained a excellent security report in passenger provider, but suffered many teaching mishaps and various incidents occurred following the airplanes have been converted to freighter configurations,” according to Jon Proctor’s viewpoint in Convair 880 and 990 (Planet Transportation Push, 1996, p. 82). “At minimum 15 hull losses have been recorded, which include numerous which were repairable, but composed off owing to financial considerations.”

This chapter examines real passenger-carrying incidents.

The very first of these occurred on November 5, 1967 when aircraft VR-HFX, a CV-880M operated by Cathay Pacific, embarked on a multi-sector flight from Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Intercontinental Airport to Calcutta with intermediate stops in Saigon and Bangkok. Piloted by Captain J. R. E. Howell, an Australian, and serviced by ten other crew users, the jetliner, with 116 travellers on board, imitated its takeoff operate in great weather conditions, but aborted the attempt when it seasoned a powerful vibration and veered to the correct at 122 knots. Irrespective of reverse thrust and toe brake apps, inadequate distance remained in which to stop.

Sliding off the runway and careening over a seawall, it plunged into Hong Kong Harbor, shedding its nose in the approach. It in the long run arrived to rest 100 yards from the runway’s conclusion and in shallow water. No hearth or explosion followed.

The captain went into the cabin to aid with the evacuation. Whilst he encountered confusion, there was little stress and escape was orderly. Helicopters and boats converged on the drinking water-immersed Convair.

Of the 127 souls on board, 20 essential hospitalization, 13 sustained insignificant accidents, and a single, a South Vietnamese girl, perished when she could not be extricated from the cabin. The many others, ironically, did not even sustain moist ft.

The vibration and veer to the appropriate were being traced to the shedding starboard nose wheel tire, the offender for the aborted takeoff.

Only 16 times after the Cathay Pacific incident, a considerably far more deadly 1 occurred-this time through the landing phase.

On November 21, 1967, TWA Flight 128, a “Star Stream 880” registered N821TW, departed its Los Angeles origin two and a fifty percent hours guiding plan since door seal issues on the at first intended plane prompted its replacement by one particular coming from Boston. Certain, itself, for that really town, with intermediate stops in Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh, it disengaged by itself from California soil with seven crew associates and 72 passengers.

The flight by itself was routine. The landing was not.

30 minutes ahead of its 21:06 approximated arrival time, it commenced its descent to Cincinnati, which, as a result of the computerized terminal info company (ATIS), was reporting light-weight snow, a 1,000-foot ceiling, and a 1.5-mile visibility.

The sleek, swept-wing jetliner, whose passenger windows provided the only light in the black soup by way of which it descended, approached the Bigger Cincinnati Airport’s north-south runway. But construction to lengthen it from 7,200 to 9,000 ft rendered its glideslope, approach lights, and center marker inoperative.

Approaching from the northwest, Flight 128 handed over the Ohio River, which was at a decrease elevation than the airport by itself simply because it had been created on a hill on the waterway’s other side. Aligned with the runway, the aircraft was slated to touch down in only a moment’s time. But, 800 toes beneath its glideslope, it would under no circumstances get to the threshold.

As a substitute, it plowed into a Hebron, Kentucky, apple orchard owned by B. S. Wagner, clipping trees with its wings until eventually the progressive impacts decreased its momentum and ripped open up its gas tanks. At 20:58, two miles from the runway, the red glow from the conflagration illuminated the whirling snow, marking the crash website.

Seventeen survivors have been taken to St. Elizabeth’s Healthcare facility in Covington, Kentucky, and a different three have been taken to Booth Healthcare facility, all of whom have been in significant affliction. Subsequent fatalities of some of them remaining only a dozen survivors between the 82 aboard.

The incident, the very first Convair 880 a single operated by a US carrier, was the worst in the Increased Cincinnati Airport’s background and the third in a sequence of very similar mishaps. The to start with two involved methods by a cargo airplane on November 14, 1961 and an American Airways Boeing 727-100 four decades later on, on November 8.

Since all experienced entailed runway undershoots, an investigation was initiated, but the FAA unsuccessful to uncover any technique procedure faults or deficiencies to the north-south runway, stating that the airport “adequately fulfills our requirements.”

The similarity, at minimum in the two airliner incidents, was insufficient or completely nonexistent instrument monitoring throughout the vital closing approach stage. In the American case, it was the failure of the crew to keep track of its altimeters in the course of a visual approach, whilst in the TWA one the initially officer did not present any altitude or airspeed callouts, ensuing in the aircraft’s incapability to clear approach obstructions and its consequent ground impact two miles from and 15 toes beneath the runway.

The 3rd fatal accident-this time to a CV-990A operated by Garuda Indonesia Airways-took put six months later, on May possibly 28, 1968. Aircraft PK-GJA, departing Jakarta the earlier night at 18:00, linked the Significantly East with Amsterdam in Europe on its multi-sector flight that intermittently took it to Singapore, Bangkok, Bombay, Karachi, Cairo, and Rome. But soon immediately after takeoff from India, it dove to the ground in a vertical orientation, reaching its by no means-exceed velocity all through its earthward plunge, and impacted 20 miles absent. All 29 on board and a person on the floor perished. While no definitive cause was observed, sabotage was strongly suspected.

Visibility-or the lack of it-was the induce of yet another CV-990A incident two a long time afterwards, on January 5, 1970. Motor failure prompted the return of plane EC-BNM, operated by Spantax, shortly soon after tits departure from Stockholm’s Arlanda Intercontinental Airport on its charter flight to Las Palmas. Whilst it re-departed with no passengers with the intention of traveling to Zurich on 3 engines for repairs, hefty fog proved the trigger of its floor plunge and impact with the encompassing forest, taking the life of five of its ten crew customers with it.

As experienced happened with the Garuda CV-990A, bomb explosions brought down two a lot more plane.

In the initially, on February 21, 1970, plane HB-ICD operated by Swissair as Flight SR 330, departed Zurich’s Kloten Global Airport with 9 crew members and 38 travellers, certain for Israel. But shortly following takeoff, an explosion ripped open the aft cargo keep.

As smoke propagated as a result of the cabin, the captain designed his mayday phone. Granted speedy clearance to return, the Convair 990A Coronado start off to circle, forced to make an ILS technique due to the fact of a minimal ceiling and limited visibility. But injury to the flight surfaces produced it challenging to management, leaving the captain to use every approach he could muster to hold the crippled craft airborne, all to no avail.

Plowing into the village of Wuerenlingen in the Swiss canton of Aargau 25 miles from Zurich, it claimed all 47 life.

The Well-liked Entrance for the Liberation of Palestine, having put a bomb in a checked suitcase, later claimed duty for the explosion, which was directed at an Israeli formal on the flight.

The 2nd consecutive explosion-disabling incident happened two many years afterwards, on June 15, 1972. In this circumstance, a Cathay Pacific CV-880M, registered VR-HFZ and operating as Flight 700Z, was traveling concerning Bangkok and Hong Kong when a time bomb, brought aboard in a piece of cabin baggage, exploded at flight stage two-nine-zero, ripping the airframe into three sections and leaving them to torpedo to the floor, crashing 33 miles southeast of Pleiku, in the sparsely populated South Vietnamese Central Highlands, by itself 200 miles northeast of Saigon, at 14:00 local time.

So polarized was the wreckage ensuing from the created-up momentum and annihilating affect with the floor, that fireplace did not even erupt. United States military helicopters were the very first to achieve the crash web-site. All 10 crew members and 71 travellers, needless to say, perished.

It was considered that the motive for the sabotage was a very long-standing 1-namely, collection of insurance policies cash. It was also thought that the product was meant to have detonated at a time when the plane would have been above the South China Sea, leaving no traces as to its result in.

The worst Convair 880 and 990 accident took area six months afterwards, on December 3, 1972, when an illustration of the 990A, registered EC-BZR and operated by Spantax, executed its takeoff roll from Los Rodeos Airport in Santa Cruz de Tenerife on the Canary Islands, certain for Munich with seven crew associates and 148 passengers.

The plane, beneath the command of Captain Daniel Nunez, rotated into blinding fog and climbed to 300 ft, at which point it knowledgeable an uncontained engine failure. Gravity-induced earthward, it bored into the ground 1 thousand feet over and above the runway, getting all life with it.

Although the result in was cited as loss of command by the initially officer, who was conducting the takeoff, it was learned that it experienced rotated at a VR velocity 20 knots lessen than that advisable for the aircraft’s gross body weight, leaving it not able to produce adequate carry to set up a constructive rate-of-climb.

The last incident in this 15-calendar year period of time was the end result of a runway incursion. Although taxiing to the gate in Chicago at the termination of its Tampa sector as Delta Flight 954, aircraft N8807E crossed the energetic runway and was clipped by a North Central DC-9-30, which prematurely rotated to attempt to climb around it. When 15 injuries and a one fatality resulted from the DC-9’s plunge again to the runway, only one particular of the CV-880’s passenger was wounded for the duration of the ensuing evacuation. Getting had the leading of its fuselage sliced off and its tail clipped, having said that, the Convair was broken over and above repair.

Short article Resources:

Lewis, W. David, and Newton, Wesley Phillips. Delta: The Record of an Airline. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 1979.

McClement, Fred. It Would not Issue Exactly where You Sit. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1969.

Proctor, Jon. Convair 880 and 990. Miami: World Transport Press, Inc., 1996.