Although the accident history of the Convair 880 and 990 can be considered extensive, especially in relation to the number that entered service, several aspects must be considered. In the 15-year period between 1960, the model’s year of entry into service, and 1974, there were seven fatal mishaps. Four included the CV-990A, the total production of which was only a third of the entire program. But the first incident didn’t happen until the original CV-880 had doubled the skies, in divergent countries and weather conditions, for seven years.
Aircraft fatalities, from a minimum of one to a maximum of 155, must also be considered. 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 flaw. Many, due to fate alone, occurred in clusters, just 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 Convair 880 and 990 ( World Transport Press, 1996, p.82). “At least 15 hull losses were recorded, including several repairable, but canceled due to economic considerations.”
This chapter examines actual passenger transport accidents.
The 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 International Airport to Calcutta with intermediate stops in Saigon and Bangkok. Piloted by Captain JRE Howell, an Australian, and manned by ten other crew members, the airliner, with 116 passengers on board, mimicked its take-off run in good weather but aborted the attempt when it experienced a strong vibration and veered right at 122 knots. Despite reverse thrust and footbrake applications, there wasn’t enough distance left to stop.
Skidding off the runway and hurtling over a jetty, 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 the flight 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 feet wet.
The vibration and yaw to the right were traced to the detachment of the tire from the starboard front wheel, the culprit of the aborted takeoff.
Just 16 days after the Cathay Pacific incident, a much more fatal one occurred, this time during the landing phase.
On November 21, 1967, TWA Flight 128, a “Star Stream 880” registered as N821TW, departed from its Los Angeles origin two and a half hours late due to door seal problems on the plane originally planned which caused his replacement by one who came from Boston. With a destination, himself, to that same city, with intermediate stops in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, he left 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, through 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, its passenger windows providing the only light in the black soup through which it descended, approached the north-south runway of Greater Cincinnati Airport. But construction to lengthen it from 7,200 to 9,000 feet made its glideslope, approach lights, and center marker nonfunctional.
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 across the waterway. Lined up with the runway, the plane was scheduled to land in just a moment. But, 800 feet below its glide path, it would never reach the threshold.
Instead, it crashed into a Hebron, Kentucky apple orchard owned by BS Wagner, shearing trees with its wings until creeping impacts reduced its momentum and opened 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. The 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 uncover 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 incidents with commercial aircraft, was inadequate or completely non-existent in the instrument monitoring during the crucial phase of final approach. In the American case, it was the failure of the crew to monitor their altimeters during a visual approach, while in the TWA the co-pilot did not provide any altitude or speed advisory, which resulted in the aircraft’s inability to clear airborne 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, took place six months later, on May 28, 1968. Aircraft PK-GJA, which departed 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, Bombay, Karachi, Cairo and Rome. But shortly after taking off from India, it hurtled to the ground in a vertical orientation, reaching its speed never surpassed during its fall toward 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. An engine failure caused the return of aircraft EC-BNM, operated by Spantax, shortly after. after his departure from Stockholm’s Arlanda International. Airport on your charter flight to Las Palmas. Although she departed again without passengers with the intention of flying to Zürich in three engines for repairs, heavy fog turned out to be the cause of her fall and impact with the surrounding forest, taking with her the lives of five of her ten crew.
As had happened with the Garuda CV-990A, the bomb blasts brought down two more aircraft.
In the first, on February 21, 1970, the aircraft HB-ICD operated by Swissair as Flight SR 330, departed from Zurich Kloten International Airport with nine crew members and 38 passengers, bound for Israel. But shortly after takeoff, an explosion ripped open the aft cargo hold.
As smoke billowed through the cabin, the captain made his distress call. Immediately cleared to return, the Convair 990A Coronado began to circle, forced to fly an ILS approach due to the low ceiling and limited visibility. However, the damage to the flight surfaces made control difficult, forcing the captain to use every method he could muster to keep the damaged craft airborne, all to no avail.
Lashing out in the village 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 explosion, which was directed at an Israeli official on the flight.
The second consecutive blast defusal incident occurred two years later, on June 15, 1972. In this case, a Cathay Pacific CV-880M, registered VR-HFZ and operating as Flight 700Z, was flying between Bangkok and Hong Kong when a bomb , carried on board in a piece of carry-on luggage, exploded at flight level two-nine-zero, tearing the airframe into three sections and letting them 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 remnant resulting from the built-up momentum and the annihilating impact with the ground that the fire didn’t even break out. US Army helicopters were the first to arrive at the crash site. All ten crew members and 71 passengers, needless to say, perished.
The motive for the sabotage was believed to be a long-standing one, 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 involving the Convair 880 and 990 occurred six months later, on December 3, 1972, when a 990A, registered EC-BZR and operated by Spantax, made its takeoff roll from Los Rodeos Airport in Santa Cruz de Tenerife on the Canary Islands, bound for Munich with seven crew members and 148 passengers.
The aircraft, under the command of Captain Daniel Núñez, spun around in blinding fog and climbed to 300 feet, at which point it experienced uncontrollable engine failure. Towards Earth, induced by gravity, it pierced the ground a thousand feet beyond the runway, taking all life with it.
Although the cause was cited as loss of control by the co-pilot, who was taking off, it was found that he had turned at a VR speed of 20 knots below that recommended for the aircraft’s gross weight, leaving it unable to generate enough lift. to set a positive climb rate.
The last accident in this 15-year period was the result of a runway incursion. While taxiing to the gate in Chicago 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 it. While 15 injuries and a single death resulted from the DC-9’s plunge onto the runway, only one of the CV-880’s passengers was injured during the subsequent evacuation. However, after the top of its fuselage was severed and its tail 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.