A History of Convair 880 and 990 Aircraft Accidents

Although the accident history of the Convair 880 and 990 can be considered extensive, especially relative to the number that entered service, several aspects must be considered. In the 15-year period between 1960, the year the model entered service, and 1974, there were seven fatal mishaps. Four included the CV-990A, whose total production was only a third of the entire program. But the first incident didn’t occur until the original CV-880 had been bending the skies, in divergent countries and weather conditions, for seven years.

Fatalities per aircraft must also be considered, from a low of one to a high of 155. Three accidents occurred during the takeoff phase and two during the cruise phase, but they were the result of intentionally placed explosive devices and not the Airframe or engine. deficiency or design defect. Many, due to fate alone, occurred in groups, only days apart.

“The 880 achieved a great safety record in passenger service, but suffered numerous training mishaps and several accidents occurred after the aircraft were converted to cargo configurations,” according to Jon Proctor’s perspective on the Convair 880 and 990 ( World Transport Press, 1996, p.82). “At least 15 hull losses were recorded, including several repairable, but written off due to economic considerations.”

This chapter examines actual passenger transport accidents.

The first of these occurred on November 5, 1967 when the VR-HFX aircraft, a CV-880M operated by Cathay Pacific, embarked on a multi-sector flight from Hong Kong Kai Tak International Airport to Calcutta with intermediate stops in Saigon and Bangkok. Piloted by Captain JRE Howell, an Australian, and attended by ten other crew members, the airliner, with 116 passengers on board, mimicked its takeoff run in good weather but aborted the attempt when it experienced a strong vibration and veered off. right at 122 knots. Despite reverse push and foot brake applications, there wasn’t enough distance left to stop.

Skidding off the runway and at full speed over a seawall, it sank in Hong Kong Harbour, losing its nose in the process. She finally stopped 100 yards from the end of the runway and in shallow water. No fire or explosion followed.

The captain entered the cabin to assist in the evacuation. Although he encountered confusion, there was little panic and a run was ordered. Helicopters and boats converged on the submerged Convair.

Of the 127 souls on board, 20 required hospitalization, 13 suffered minor injuries and one, a South Vietnamese woman, died when she could not be removed from the cabin. The others, ironically, couldn’t even stand their wet feet.

The vibration and yaw to the right were traced to a detached tire on the starboard front wheel, the culprit in the aborted takeoff.

Just 16 days after the Cathay Pacific incident, a much more fatal incident occurred, this time during the landing phase.

On November 21, 1967, TWA Flight 128, a “Star Stream 880” registered N821TW, departed from its Los Angeles origin two and a half hours late due to door seal problems on the plane originally anticipated that caused its replacement by one that came from Boston. Destined, himself, to that same city, with intermediate stops in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, he separated from Californian soil with seven crew members and 72 passengers.

The flight itself was routine. The landing did not go.

Thirty minutes before the 9:06 p.m. ETA, it began its descent toward Cincinnati, which, via the Automatic Terminal Information Service (ATIS), was reporting light snow, a 1,000-foot ceiling, and 1.5-mile visibility. .

The sleek, swept-winged airliner, whose passenger windows provided the only light in the black soup through which it descended, approached the north-south runway of the Greater Cincinnati Airport. But construction to lengthen it from 7,200 to 9,000 feet caused its glideslope, approach lights and center marker to not work.

Approaching from the northwest, Flight 128 passed over the Ohio River, which was at a lower elevation than the airport itself because it had been built on a hill on the other side of the waterway. Lined up with the runway, the plane was scheduled to land in just a moment. But, 800 feet below its glideslope, it would never reach the threshold.

Instead, it crashed into a Hebron, Kentucky apple orchard owned by BS Wagner, slashing trees with its wings until progressive impacts reduced its momentum and burst open its fuel tanks. At 8:58 p.m., two miles from the runway, the red glow of the conflagration illuminated the swirling snow, marking the crash site.

Seventeen survivors were taken to St. Elizabeth Hospital in Covington, Kentucky, and three others were taken to Booth Hospital, all in serious condition. Subsequent deaths of some of them left only a dozen survivors among the 82 on board.

The accident, the first Convair 880 operated by a US airline, was the worst in the history of Greater Cincinnati Airport and the third in a series of similar mishaps. The first two approaches were made by a cargo plane on November 14, 1961, and an American Airlines Boeing 727-100 four years later, on November 8.

Because everything had involved runway failures, an investigation was launched, but the FAA was unable to discover any errors or deficiencies in the north-south runway approach procedure, stating that the airport “adequately meets our standards.”

The similarity, at least in the two commercial aircraft incidents, was inadequate or completely absent in instrument monitoring during the crucial final approach phase. In the US case, it was the crew’s failure to monitor their altimeters during a visual approach, whereas in the TWA the copilot did not provide any altitude or speed advisory, resulting in the aircraft’s inability to clear obstructions. approach and its consequent impact on the ground two miles and 15 feet below the runway.

The third fatal accident, this time involving a CV-990A operated by Garuda Indonesia Airways, occurred six months later on May 28, 1968. Aircraft PK-GJA, which had left Jakarta the night before at 18:00, he linked the Far East with Amsterdam in Europe on his multi-sector flight that took him intermittently to Singapore, Bangkok, Mumbai, Karachi, Cairo and Rome. But shortly after taking off from India, it plunged to the ground in a vertical orientation, reaching its never-better speed during its fall to earth, and impacted 20 miles away. All 29 on board and one on the ground perished. Although no definitive cause was found, sabotage was strongly suspected.

Visibility, or lack thereof, was the cause of another CV-990A accident two years later, on January 5, 1970. Engine failure led to the return of aircraft EC-BNM, operated by Spantax, shortly after his departure from Arlanda International in Stockholm. Airport on your charter flight to Las Palmas. Although she again left without passengers with the intention of flying to Zurich in three engines for repairs, the dense fog proved to be the cause of her crash and impact with the surrounding forest, taking the lives of five of her ten crew with it.

As had happened with the Garuda CV-990A, bomb blasts brought down two more aircraft.

In the first, on February 21, 1970, the HB-ICD aircraft operated by Swissair as Flight SR 330, departed from Zurich’s Kloten International Airport with nine crew members and 38 passengers, bound for Israel. But shortly after takeoff, an explosion tore open the aft cargo hold.

As the smoke billowed through the cabin, the captain made his distress call. With immediate clearance to return, the Convair 990A Coronado began to circle, forced to make an ILS approach due to the low ceiling and limited visibility. However, damage to the flight surfaces made control difficult, forcing the captain to use whatever methods he could muster to keep the damaged craft airborne, all to no avail.

Ramping through the town of Wuerenlingen in the Swiss canton of Aargau 25 miles from Zurich, it claimed all 47 lives.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, after planting a bomb in a checked suitcase, later claimed responsibility for the blast, which was directed at an Israeli official on the flight.

The second consecutive bomb disposal incident occurred two years later, on June 15, 1972. In this case, a Cathay Pacific CV-880M, registration VR-HFZ and operating as Flight 700Z, was flying between Bangkok and Hong Kong when a bomb of time, carried on board in a piece of carry-on luggage, exploded at flight level two-nine-zero, ripping the airframe into three sections and allowing them to torpedo to the ground, crashing 33 miles southeast of Pleiku, in the sparsely populated central highlands of South Vietnam. , 200 miles northeast of Saigon, at 2:00 p.m. local time.

So polarized was the debris from the accumulated momentum and the killing impact with the ground that the fire did not even break out. United States Army helicopters were the first to arrive at the crash site. All ten crew members and 71 passengers, needless to say, perished.

It was believed that the reason for the sabotage was long-standing, namely the collection of insurance money. It was also believed that the device was supposed to have detonated at a time when the plane would have been over the South China Sea, leaving no trace of its cause.

The worst accident of the Convair 880 and 990 took place six months later, on December 3, 1972, when a copy of the 990A, registered EC-BZR and operated by Spantax, executed its takeoff run from the Los Rodeos airport in Santa Cruz de Tenerife the Canary Islands, bound for Munich with seven crew members and 148 passengers.

The aircraft, under the command of Captain Daniel Núñez, turned in blinding fog and climbed to 300 feet, at which point it experienced an uncontainable engine failure. Earthward, induced by gravity, it pierced the ground a thousand feet beyond the runway, taking all the lives with it.

Although the cause was cited as loss of control by the co-pilot, who was performing the takeoff, it was discovered that she had turned at a VR speed 20 knots below the recommended speed for the gross weight of the aircraft, leaving her unable to generate enough lift. to establish a positive climb rate.

The last accident in this 15-year period was the result of a runway incursion. While taxiing to the Chicago gate at the end of its Tampa sector as Delta Flight 954, aircraft N8807E crossed the active runway and was intercepted by a North Central DC-9-30, which turned prematurely to attempt to climb the runway. While 15 injuries and a single fatality resulted from the DC-9 plunging onto the runway, only one of the CV-880 passengers was injured during the subsequent evacuation. However, after the top of its fuselage was severed and its tail was severed, the Convair was damaged beyond repair.

Article Sources:

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

McClement, Fred. It doesn’t matter where you sit. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1969.

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