Page 34 - AAA OCTOBER - DECEMEBER 2023 Latest Magazine | GBP
P. 34
Not only did Hughes insist on a host of
design changes, he even insisted on the
aircraft having a metal skin with golden
anodizing.
At one stage, the aircraft was dubbed the
Golden Arrow because of this.
Later, the anodizing was dropped because
of batch match problems, and the name was
JAL 880 Handover changed to 880, denoting the speed it would
travel in feet per second.
However, Convair engineers said the CV880
represented the number of changes that
Hughes insisted on, typically at midnight car
park meetings.
Convair launched a faster version of the
CV880 the CV990 promising it could beat the
707 across the US by 45 minutes.
Japan Domestic Airlines 880 American’s chief C.R. Smith was taken by
the speed and ordered 25 for a first class
only “Blue Streak” service.
Problems with the 990 surfaced almost
immediately on test flights and the aircraft
was unable to meet its speed and fuel burn
guarantees despite a host of modifications.
When the production run finished with just
102 CV880s and CV990s built, GD had writ-
ten off US$4.16 million per plane – more than
CV-880M Cathay Pacific Airways they sold for.
However, Convair had success with Asian
airlines with Cathay Pacific Airways, Japan
Air Lines, Japan Domestic Airlines, China Air
Transport of Taiwan and Garuda Indonesia
Airways all purchasing CV880s or CV990s.
Pilots loved the jets and they had along
with the DC-8 the most rugged fuselage
construction.•
China Air Transport 880 Picture credit;
General Dynamics via the Geoffrey Thomas Collection
34 | OCTOBER - DECEMBER 2023 WWW.GBP.COM.SG/AAA
