Despite the fact that the Convair 880’s and 990’s accident heritage can be regarded as extensive, in particular in ratio to the selection that entered service, a number of areas need to be thought of. In the 15-yr period of time involving 1960, the type’s 12 months of provider entry, to 1974, there had been 7 lethal mishaps. 4 integrated the CV-990A, whose generation full was only a 3rd of the entire program’s. But the to start with incident did not manifest until finally the original CV-880 had plied the skies, in divergent nations around the world and climactic conditions, for seven many years.
Fatalities for each aircraft also will have to be considered-from a small of just one to a higher of 155. A few incidents took area for the duration of the takeoff phase and two in the course of the cruise period, but they ended up the end result of deliberately planted explosive equipment and not of airframe or powerplant deficiency or design flaw. Quite a few, thanks only to fate, happened in clusters, only times aside.
“The 880 attained a terrific security file in passenger company, but experienced various education mishaps and a number of mishaps transpired following the airplanes were being converted to freighter configurations,” according to Jon Proctor’s standpoint in Convair 880 and 990 (Globe Transportation Push, 1996, p. 82). “At the very least 15 hull losses ended up recorded, which include numerous which were being repairable, but composed off thanks to economic things to consider.”
This chapter examines true passenger-carrying accidents.
The initially of these happened 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 Worldwide 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 associates, the jetliner, with 116 travellers on board, imitated its takeoff run in very good weather conditions, but aborted the attempt when it seasoned a solid vibration and veered to the correct at 122 knots. Despite reverse thrust and toe brake programs, inadequate length remained in which to stop.
Sliding off the runway and careening around a seawall, it plunged into Hong Kong Harbor, shedding its nose in the process. It ultimately arrived to rest 100 yards from the runway’s conclusion and in shallow h2o. No hearth or explosion followed.
The captain went into the cabin to help with the evacuation. Whilst he encountered confusion, there was minimal worry and escape was orderly. Helicopters and boats converged on the h2o-immersed Convair.
Of the 127 souls on board, 20 needed hospitalization, 13 sustained minor accidents, and just one, a South Vietnamese woman, perished when she could not be extricated from the cabin. The other folks, ironically, did not even maintain soaked feet.
The vibration and veer to the appropriate were traced to the shedding starboard nose wheel tire, the offender for the aborted takeoff.
Only 16 days following the Cathay Pacific incident, a significantly more fatal a single happened-this time through the landing period.
On November 21, 1967, TWA Flight 128, a “Star Stream 880” registered N821TW, departed its Los Angeles origin two and a fifty percent several hours at the rear of program mainly because doorway seal problems on the initially meant plane prompted its substitute by just one coming from Boston. Certain, itself, for that quite city, with intermediate stops in Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh, it disengaged alone from California soil with 7 crew users and 72 passengers.
The flight alone was program. The landing was not.
Thirty minutes ahead of its 21:06 approximated arrival time, it commenced its descent to Cincinnati, which, via the automated terminal facts assistance (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 supplied the only light-weight in the black soup by means of which it descended, approached the Bigger Cincinnati Airport’s north-south runway. But building to lengthen it from 7,200 to 9,000 toes rendered its glideslope, strategy lights, and center marker inoperative.
Approaching from the northwest, Flight 128 handed above the Ohio River, which was at a lower elevation than the airport by itself since it had been made on a hill on the waterway’s other aspect. Aligned with the runway, the aircraft was slated to contact down in only a moment’s time. But, 800 feet under its glideslope, it would never get to 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 diminished its momentum and ripped open its fuel tanks. At 20:58, two miles from the runway, the purple glow from the conflagration illuminated the whirling snow, marking the crash web-site.
Seventeen survivors have been taken to St. Elizabeth’s Clinic in Covington, Kentucky, and an additional 3 have been taken to Booth Hospital, all of whom were in significant issue. Subsequent fatalities of some of them still left only a dozen survivors among the 82 aboard.
The accident, the initially Convair 880 one operated by a US carrier, was the worst in the Better Cincinnati Airport’s history and the third in a collection of similar mishaps. The initially two concerned techniques by a cargo aircraft on November 14, 1961 and an American Airways Boeing 727-100 4 years later, on November 8.
Since all experienced entailed runway undershoots, an investigation was initiated, but the FAA failed to uncover any solution method glitches or deficiencies to the north-south runway, stating that the airport “adequately satisfies our standards.”
The similarity, at the very least in the two airliner incidents, was inadequate or completely nonexistent instrument monitoring all through the important last technique section. In the American case, it was the failure of the crew to keep track of its altimeters throughout a visible method, when in the TWA one particular the to start with officer did not present any altitude or airspeed callouts, resulting in the aircraft’s incapability to distinct strategy obstructions and its consequent ground effects two miles from and 15 toes below the runway.
The third fatal incident-this time to a CV-990A operated by Garuda Indonesia Airways-took spot six months later on, on May well 28, 1968. Plane PK-GJA, departing Jakarta the earlier night at 18:00, joined the Far 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 never-exceed speed all through its earthward plunge, and impacted 20 miles away. All 29 on board and just one on the ground perished. Even though no definitive result in was discovered, sabotage was strongly suspected.
Visibility-or the lack of it-was the cause of another CV-990A accident two years later on, on January 5, 1970. Motor failure prompted the return of plane EC-BNM, operated by Spantax, shortly just after tits departure from Stockholm’s Arlanda Worldwide Airport on its charter flight to Las Palmas. Though it re-departed without having passengers with the intention of traveling to Zurich on 3 engines for repairs, hefty fog proved the cause of its floor plunge and influence with the encompassing forest, getting the lives of five of its ten crew customers with it.
As experienced occurred with the Garuda CV-990A, bomb explosions brought down two a lot more aircraft.
In the initially, on February 21, 1970, plane HB-ICD operated by Swissair as Flight SR 330, departed Zurich’s Kloten Intercontinental Airport with nine crew associates and 38 travellers, certain for Israel. But shortly right after takeoff, an explosion ripped open the aft cargo maintain.
As smoke propagated through the cabin, the captain manufactured his mayday connect with. Granted instant clearance to return, the Convair 990A Coronado start off to circle, forced to make an ILS approach because of a lower ceiling and limited visibility. However problems to the flight surfaces designed it tough to manage, leaving the captain to use each individual system 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 Common Front for the Liberation of Palestine, getting put a bomb in a checked suitcase, later on claimed obligation for the explosion, which was directed at an Israeli formal on the flight.
The next consecutive explosion-disabling incident occurred two yrs later, on June 15, 1972. In this situation, a Cathay Pacific CV-880M, registered VR-HFZ and operating 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 level two-9-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 regional time.
So polarized was the wreckage ensuing from the constructed-up momentum and annihilating impact with the floor, that hearth did not even erupt. United States army helicopters were being the to start with to access the crash site. All ten crew customers and 71 travellers, needless to say, perished.
It was thought that the cause for the sabotage was a very long-standing a person-particularly, selection of insurance plan money. It was also considered that the product was supposed to have detonated at a time when the plane would have been above the South China Sea, leaving no traces as to its bring about.
The worst Convair 880 and 990 accident took put six months later on, on December 3, 1972, when an example 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 7 crew associates and 148 passengers.
The aircraft, underneath the command of Captain Daniel Nunez, rotated into blinding fog and climbed to 300 ft, at which point it professional an uncontained motor failure. Gravity-induced earthward, it bored into the ground 1 thousand ft past the runway, taking all lives with it.
Even though the result in was cited as loss of regulate by the to start with officer, who was conducting the takeoff, it was found that it had rotated at a VR speed 20 knots decreased than that suggested for the aircraft’s gross weight, leaving it unable to generate enough elevate to build a positive rate-of-climb.
The very last accident in this 15-yr period was the final result of a runway incursion. Although taxiing to the gate in Chicago at the termination of its Tampa sector as Delta Flight 954, plane N8807E crossed the active runway and was clipped by a North Central DC-9-30, which prematurely rotated to endeavor to climb more than it. When 15 injuries and a one fatality resulted from the DC-9’s plunge back to the runway, only one particular of the CV-880’s passenger was wounded all through the ensuing evacuation. Obtaining experienced the best of its fuselage sliced off and its tail clipped, having said that, the Convair was destroyed past repair service.
Short article Sources:
Lewis, W. David, and Newton, Wesley Phillips. Delta: The Background of an Airline. Athens, Ga: The University of Ga Press, 1979.
McClement, Fred. It Will not Matter In which You Sit. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1969.
Proctor, Jon. Convair 880 and 990. Miami: Planet Transport Push, Inc., 1996.
