Despite the fact that the Convair 880’s and 990’s accident history can be considered in depth, primarily in ratio to the amount that entered company, several facets must be thought of. In the 15-12 months interval concerning 1960, the type’s yr of service entry, to 1974, there ended up 7 deadly mishaps. 4 incorporated the CV-990A, whose production overall was only a third of the whole program’s. But the 1st incident did not take place till the unique CV-880 had plied the skies, in divergent countries and climactic conditions, for 7 decades.
Fatalities for each plane also should be considered-from a reduced of one to a large of 155. A few accidents took put through the takeoff period and two in the course of the cruise phase, but they ended up the consequence of deliberately planted explosive gadgets and not of airframe or powerplant deficiency or style and design flaw. Lots of, thanks only to fate, occurred in clusters, only times apart.
“The 880 attained a good security file in passenger assistance, but experienced numerous coaching mishaps and many accidents happened just after the airplanes have been transformed to freighter configurations,” according to Jon Proctor’s viewpoint in Convair 880 and 990 (Environment Transport Press, 1996, p. 82). “At the very least 15 hull losses had been recorded, which includes a number of which had been repairable, but published off thanks to financial things to consider.”
This chapter examines actual passenger-carrying incidents.
The initial of these occurred 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 Intercontinental Airport to Calcutta with intermediate stops in Saigon and Bangkok. Piloted by Captain J. R. E. Howell, an Australian, and serviced by 10 other crew users, the jetliner, with 116 passengers on board, imitated its takeoff operate in excellent climate, but aborted the try when it expert a potent vibration and veered to the suitable at 122 knots. Even with reverse thrust and toe brake applications, insufficient distance remained in which to end.
Sliding off the runway and careening in excess of a seawall, it plunged into Hong Kong Harbor, shedding its nose in the course of action. It in the long run came to rest 100 yards from the runway’s close and in shallow water. No fireplace or explosion adopted.
The captain went into the cabin to support with the evacuation. Despite the fact that he encountered confusion, there was tiny 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 minimal injuries, and just one, a South Vietnamese woman, perished when she could not be extricated from the cabin. The some others, ironically, did not even sustain moist toes.
The vibration and veer to the ideal ended up traced to the shedding starboard nose wheel tire, the culprit for the aborted takeoff.
Only 16 days immediately after the Cathay Pacific incident, a much far more deadly a person transpired-this time all 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 50 percent hrs at the rear of schedule because doorway seal troubles on the initially supposed aircraft prompted its replacement by just one coming from Boston. Bound, itself, for that incredibly metropolis, with intermediate stops in Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh, it disengaged itself from California soil with 7 crew associates and 72 travellers.
The flight alone was regimen. The landing was not.
Thirty minutes prior to its 21:06 estimated arrival time, it commenced its descent to Cincinnati, which, by means of the automatic terminal details services (ATIS), was reporting light-weight snow, a 1,000-foot ceiling, and a 1.5-mile visibility.
The smooth, swept-wing jetliner, whose passenger home windows supplied the only light-weight in the black soup by means of which it descended, approached the Larger Cincinnati Airport’s north-south runway. But construction to lengthen it from 7,200 to 9,000 feet rendered its glideslope, method lights, and center marker inoperative.
Approaching from the northwest, Flight 128 handed around the Ohio River, which was at a reduced elevation than the airport itself mainly because it experienced been constructed on a hill on the waterway’s other facet. Aligned with the runway, the aircraft was slated to touch down in only a moment’s time. But, 800 feet underneath its glideslope, it would never ever achieve the threshold.
Instead, it plowed into a Hebron, Kentucky, apple orchard owned by B. S. Wagner, clipping trees with its wings until eventually the progressive impacts diminished its momentum and ripped open up its gasoline 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 were taken to St. Elizabeth’s Healthcare facility in Covington, Kentucky, and yet another three have been taken to Booth Healthcare facility, all of whom have been in really serious condition. Subsequent deaths of some of them left only a dozen survivors among the 82 aboard.
The accident, the very first Convair 880 just one operated by a US carrier, was the worst in the Better Cincinnati Airport’s heritage and the third in a series of equivalent mishaps. The first two included strategies by a cargo aircraft on November 14, 1961 and an American Airways Boeing 727-100 4 years later, on November 8.
Since all had entailed runway undershoots, an investigation was initiated, but the FAA unsuccessful to uncover any solution process errors or deficiencies to the north-south runway, stating that the airport “sufficiently fulfills our expectations.”
The similarity, at least in the two airliner incidents, was inadequate or entirely nonexistent instrument monitoring in the course of the crucial final technique section. In the American scenario, it was the failure of the crew to keep track of its altimeters in the course of a visible strategy, although in the TWA a single the first officer did not give any altitude or airspeed callouts, resulting in the aircraft’s incapacity to very clear technique obstructions and its consequent floor influence two miles from and 15 ft under the runway.
The 3rd fatal incident-this time to a CV-990A operated by Garuda Indonesia Airways-took position 6 months later on, on May 28, 1968. Plane PK-GJA, departing Jakarta the earlier evening at 18:00, linked the Considerably East with Amsterdam in Europe on its multi-sector flight that intermittently took it to Singapore, Bangkok, Bombay, Karachi, Cairo, and Rome. But soon after takeoff from India, it dove to the ground in a vertical orientation, achieving its never-exceed speed throughout its earthward plunge, and impacted 20 miles away. All 29 on board and one on the floor perished. Despite the fact that no definitive induce was located, sabotage was strongly suspected.
Visibility-or the absence of it-was the cause of a further CV-990A accident two decades afterwards, on January 5, 1970. Engine failure prompted the return of aircraft EC-BNM, operated by Spantax, soon after tits departure from Stockholm’s Arlanda International Airport on its constitution flight to Las Palmas. Even though it re-departed without the need of passengers with the intention of flying to Zurich on a few engines for repairs, hefty fog proved the induce of its floor plunge and effect with the encompassing forest, having the lives of 5 of its ten crew users with it.
As had occurred with the Garuda CV-990A, bomb explosions brought down two much more plane.
In the first, on February 21, 1970, aircraft HB-ICD operated by Swissair as Flight SR 330, departed Zurich’s Kloten Global Airport with 9 crew associates and 38 travellers, certain for Israel. But soon just after takeoff, an explosion ripped open the aft cargo keep.
As smoke propagated by way of the cabin, the captain designed his mayday simply call. Granted fast clearance to return, the Convair 990A Coronado start off to circle, compelled to make an ILS strategy because of a minimal ceiling and limited visibility. However problems to the flight surfaces made it challenging to regulate, leaving the captain to use every method he could muster to retain 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 lives.
The Well-known Entrance for the Liberation of Palestine, acquiring placed a bomb in a checked suitcase, afterwards claimed duty for the explosion, which was directed at an Israeli official on the flight.
The second consecutive explosion-disabling incident transpired two yrs afterwards, on June 15, 1972. In this scenario, a Cathay Pacific CV-880M, registered VR-HFZ and functioning as Flight 700Z, was traveling among Bangkok and Hong Kong when a time bomb, brought aboard in a piece of cabin baggage, exploded at flight degree two-9-zero, ripping the airframe into three sections and leaving them to torpedo to the ground, crashing 33 miles southeast of Pleiku, in the sparsely populated South Vietnamese Central Highlands, alone 200 miles northeast of Saigon, at 14:00 nearby time.
So polarized was the wreckage resulting from the designed-up momentum and annihilating effects with the floor, that fire did not even erupt. United States military helicopters were being the initially to attain the crash site. All 10 crew associates and 71 passengers, pointless to say, perished.
It was considered that the purpose for the sabotage was a extensive-standing 1-specifically, assortment of insurance coverage funds. It was also considered that the unit was supposed to have detonated at a time when the plane would have been about the South China Sea, leaving no traces as to its lead to.
The worst Convair 880 and 990 accident took location six months later, 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 customers and 148 passengers.
The plane, under the command of Captain Daniel Nunez, rotated into blinding fog and climbed to 300 feet, at which point it professional an uncontained motor failure. Gravity-induced earthward, it bored into the ground one particular thousand toes beyond the runway, getting all lives with it.
Although the bring about was cited as reduction of regulate by the very first officer, who was conducting the takeoff, it was uncovered that it experienced rotated at a VR pace 20 knots decreased than that advised for the aircraft’s gross bodyweight, leaving it not able to make sufficient lift to establish a favourable price-of-climb.
The very last accident in this 15-12 months time period was the end result of a runway incursion. While taxiing to the gate in Chicago at the termination of its Tampa sector as Delta Flight 954, plane N8807E crossed the lively runway and was clipped by a North Central DC-9-30, which prematurely rotated to attempt to climb over it. Though 15 accidents and a one fatality resulted from the DC-9’s plunge back to the runway, only a single of the CV-880’s passenger was hurt all through the ensuing evacuation. Getting had the best of its fuselage sliced off and its tail clipped, even so, the Convair was harmed over and above repair.
Short article Resources:
Lewis, W. David, and Newton, Wesley Phillips. Delta: The Record of an Airline. Athens, Georgia: The College of Georgia Push, 1979.
McClement, Fred. It Doesn’t Issue Exactly where You Sit. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1969.
Proctor, Jon. Convair 880 and 990. Miami: Globe Transport Push, Inc., 1996.
