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Whilst the Convair 880’s and 990’s accident historical past can be regarded as comprehensive, primarily in ratio to the variety that entered services, many facets ought to be regarded as. In the 15-yr period concerning 1960, the type’s year of support entry, to 1974, there were being seven fatal mishaps. Four integrated the CV-990A, whose manufacturing full was only a third of the whole program’s. But the to start with incident did not happen till the first CV-880 experienced plied the skies, in divergent nations and climactic problems, for seven several years.
Fatalities for each plane also should be regarded as-from a minimal of one to a large of 155. Three accidents took location during the takeoff stage and two in the course of the cruise section, but they have been the outcome of deliberately planted explosive products and not of airframe or powerplant deficiency or design flaw. Quite a few, thanks only to fate, happened in clusters, only days apart.
“The 880 attained a great protection file in passenger services, but experienced numerous education mishaps and various accidents transpired soon after the airplanes ended up transformed to freighter configurations,” according to Jon Proctor’s standpoint in Convair 880 and 990 (Environment Transport Press, 1996, p. 82). “At least 15 hull losses were recorded, which includes a number of which were repairable, but published off thanks to economic concerns.”
This chapter examines true passenger-carrying mishaps.
The initial of these happened on November 5, 1967 when plane VR-HFX, a CV-880M operated by Cathay Pacific, embarked on a multi-sector flight from Hong Kong’s Kai Tak International 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 passengers on board, imitated its takeoff run in good climate, but aborted the attempt when it professional a robust vibration and veered to the right at 122 knots. Despite reverse thrust and toe brake purposes, inadequate length remained in which to halt.
Sliding off the runway and careening over a seawall, it plunged into Hong Kong Harbor, shedding its nose in the method. It eventually came to rest 100 yards from the runway’s close and in shallow water. No fire or explosion adopted.
The captain went into the cabin to aid with the evacuation. Whilst he encountered confusion, there was small stress and escape was orderly. Helicopters and boats converged on the h2o-immersed Convair.
Of the 127 souls on board, 20 essential hospitalization, 13 sustained slight injuries, and a person, a South Vietnamese female, perished when she could not be extricated from the cabin. The other individuals, ironically, did not even maintain damp ft.
The vibration and veer to the appropriate had been traced to the shedding starboard nose wheel tire, the perpetrator for the aborted takeoff.
Only 16 times after the Cathay Pacific incident, a significantly far more deadly a single occurred-this time for the duration of the landing stage.
On November 21, 1967, TWA Flight 128, a “Star Stream 880” registered N821TW, departed its Los Angeles origin two and a 50 % several hours driving plan for the reason that door seal difficulties on the initially supposed aircraft prompted its substitute by one coming from Boston. Bound, alone, for that extremely metropolis, with intermediate stops in Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh, it disengaged alone from California soil with seven crew associates and 72 passengers.
The flight itself was plan. The landing was not.
30 minutes in advance of its 21:06 approximated arrival time, it commenced its descent to Cincinnati, which, by means of the computerized terminal data support (ATIS), was reporting mild 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 through which it descended, approached the Higher Cincinnati Airport’s north-south runway. But construction to lengthen it from 7,200 to 9,000 toes rendered its glideslope, tactic lights, and middle marker inoperative.
Approaching from the northwest, Flight 128 handed about the Ohio River, which was at a lower elevation than the airport alone because it experienced been constructed on a hill on the waterway’s other facet. Aligned with the runway, the plane was slated to touch down in only a moment’s time. But, 800 feet underneath its glideslope, it would by no means reach the threshold.
In its place, it plowed into a Hebron, Kentucky, apple orchard owned by B. S. Wagner, clipping trees with its wings until finally the progressive impacts minimized its momentum and ripped open its gasoline tanks. At 20:58, two miles from the runway, the red glow from the conflagration illuminated the whirling snow, marking the crash web site.
Seventeen survivors were being taken to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Covington, Kentucky, and another three had been taken to Booth Clinic, all of whom ended up in serious issue. Subsequent fatalities of some of them left only a dozen survivors amid the 82 aboard.
The accident, the initially Convair 880 one particular operated by a US provider, was the worst in the Greater Cincinnati Airport’s historical past and the 3rd in a sequence of related mishaps. The very first two concerned ways by a cargo plane on November 14, 1961 and an American Airways Boeing 727-100 four many years later, on November 8.
For the reason that all experienced entailed runway undershoots, an investigation was initiated, but the FAA unsuccessful to uncover any strategy process errors or deficiencies to the north-south runway, stating that the airport “adequately satisfies our expectations.”
The similarity, at the very least in the two airliner incidents, was insufficient or altogether nonexistent instrument checking throughout the critical final approach stage. In the American case, it was the failure of the crew to observe its altimeters in the course of a visible solution, though in the TWA one the very first officer did not provide any altitude or airspeed callouts, ensuing in the aircraft’s lack of ability to crystal clear method obstructions and its consequent floor effects two miles from and 15 toes under the runway.
The third lethal accident-this time to a CV-990A operated by Garuda Indonesia Airways-took put 6 months afterwards, on Might 28, 1968. Plane PK-GJA, departing Jakarta the previous evening at 18:00, joined the Much East with Amsterdam in Europe on its multi-sector flight that intermittently took it to Singapore, Bangkok, Bombay, Karachi, Cairo, and Rome. But shortly following takeoff from India, it dove to the ground in a vertical orientation, achieving its in no way-exceed speed through its earthward plunge, and impacted 20 miles absent. All 29 on board and 1 on the floor perished. Even though no definitive induce was found, sabotage was strongly suspected.
Visibility-or the lack of it-was the trigger of another CV-990A incident two yrs later, on January 5, 1970. Engine failure prompted the return of aircraft EC-BNM, operated by Spantax, shortly following tits departure from Stockholm’s Arlanda Worldwide Airport on its charter flight to Las Palmas. Whilst it re-departed with out passengers with the intention of flying to Zurich on 3 engines for repairs, significant fog proved the result in of its ground plunge and impression with the encompassing forest, using the lives of 5 of its ten crew users with it.
As had transpired with the Garuda CV-990A, bomb explosions brought down two additional aircraft.
In the to start with, on February 21, 1970, aircraft HB-ICD operated by Swissair as Flight SR 330, departed Zurich’s Kloten International Airport with 9 crew users and 38 passengers, sure for Israel. But shortly soon after takeoff, an explosion ripped open the aft cargo keep.
As smoke propagated by the cabin, the captain manufactured his mayday simply call. Granted speedy clearance to return, the Convair 990A Coronado begin to circle, pressured to make an ILS technique since of a small ceiling and restricted visibility. But problems to the flight surfaces designed it tough to handle, leaving the captain to use each and every technique 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 Preferred Entrance for the Liberation of Palestine, obtaining put a bomb in a checked suitcase, afterwards claimed accountability for the explosion, which was directed at an Israeli formal on the flight.
The next consecutive explosion-disabling incident happened two a long time afterwards, on June 15, 1972. In this circumstance, a Cathay Pacific CV-880M, registered VR-HFZ and functioning as Flight 700Z, was traveling amongst Bangkok and Hong Kong when a time bomb, introduced aboard in a piece of cabin baggage, exploded at flight stage two-nine-zero, ripping the airframe into a few sections and leaving them to torpedo to the ground, crashing 33 miles southeast of Pleiku, in the sparsely populated South Vietnamese Central Highlands, by itself 200 miles northeast of Saigon, at 14:00 neighborhood time.
So polarized was the wreckage ensuing from the crafted-up momentum and annihilating influence with the floor, that fire did not even erupt. United States army helicopters were being the first to attain the crash site. All ten crew customers and 71 travellers, useless to say, perished.
It was thought that the explanation for the sabotage was a extensive-standing just one-specifically, collection of insurance cash. It was also thought that the gadget was intended to have detonated at a time when the aircraft would have been around the South China Sea, leaving no traces as to its bring about.
The worst Convair 880 and 990 incident took place six months later on, 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, bound for Munich with seven crew users and 148 passengers.
The plane, under the command of Captain Daniel Nunez, rotated into blinding fog and climbed to 300 feet, at which level it skilled an uncontained engine failure. Gravity-induced earthward, it bored into the floor a single thousand feet past the runway, having all life with it.
Whilst the bring about was cited as loss of control by the very first officer, who was conducting the takeoff, it was found that it had rotated at a VR speed 20 knots decreased than that advised for the aircraft’s gross bodyweight, leaving it unable to produce adequate raise to build a beneficial fee-of-climb.
The past accident in this 15-12 months period was the result of a runway incursion. When taxiing to the gate in Chicago at the termination of its Tampa sector as Delta Flight 954, aircraft N8807E crossed the lively runway and was clipped by a North Central DC-9-30, which prematurely rotated to try to climb more than it. Though 15 injuries and a solitary fatality resulted from the DC-9’s plunge back to the runway, only just one of the CV-880’s passenger was hurt through the ensuing evacuation. Acquiring had the leading of its fuselage sliced off and its tail clipped, nevertheless, the Convair was harmed outside of restore.
Report Resources:
Lewis, W. David, and Newton, Wesley Phillips. Delta: The Heritage of an Airline. Athens, Ga: The University of Georgia Push, 1979.
McClement, Fred. It Does not Subject In which You Sit. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1969.
Proctor, Jon. Convair 880 and 990. Miami: Environment Transportation Push, Inc., 1996.
