Textbook definition of "ground effect". This was probably not standard operating procedure.
What looks like a 707 but isn't? A DC-8 of course but there was another.
The annals of aviation history are full of promising designs that just never managed to find their niche. The Convair 880/990 was one of those "seemed like a good idea at the time" designs.
Commercially it was a flop and caused Convair to leave the airliner business for good.
Back in the 1950s Convair (later General Dynamics) was known for making two things: fast Delta-winged military jets and work-a-day propeller driven regional airliners. I can recall riding on Convair turboprops back in the 1980s when they were still a mainstay of the regional airlines.
Short haul airliners like this 440 were Convair's bread and butter.
In 1956 Convair wanted to get into the jet airliner game. They thought there might be a niche for something smaller and faster than the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8. They were right. It's just that the niche was exceedingly small.
TWA was the initial customer for the Convair 880. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Just like this ad.
They found a potential customer in TWA, which was at the time run by aviation pioneer and noted eccentric Howard Hughes. Hughes himself provided the specifications for the new airliner and even flew one of the early test flights.
Convair 880 in its test colors.
Coming up with a name for the new airliner proved to be an issue. Convair wanted to call it the "Skylark" while Hughes wanted "Golden Arrow". Some of the early versions were painted in a splashy gold and white paint scheme. Continental Airlines took issue since they owned the copyright to the name "Golden Jet" and "Golden Arrow" was close enough to get the lawyers involved.
The 880 in its "Golden Arrow" paint scheme with a couple of more famous Convair products.
Ultimately neither one got their way. They settled on naming the plane after its top speed of 600 mph and thus it was to be the "Convair 600". Then someone decided that 600 mph equals 880 feet per second and that 880 sounded cooler than 600.
Convair 880 in TWA colors. Even though they were the primary customer TWA only bought 30.
A Convair 880 looks like a slightly smaller version of a 707 or a DC-8. To make it go fast they had to keep the fuselage narrow, restricting it to five-across seating versus six for the competition. At the time the airlines didn't like that setup, although it never stopped them from buying a gazillion DC-9/MD-80s that had the same seating arrangement.
The 880 had five-across seating versus six for the competition.
I'm sure today someone would figure out how to cram more seats into this thing. The seat pitch looks quite generous by today's standards.
It was about 20 feet shorter than the competition and maxed out at 200,000 pounds. That puts it in the same league as a 727-200 or an MD-80.
It was powered by four General Electric CJ805 engines. This was essentially the J79 engine that powered the F-4 Phantom minus the afterburner. It's a very thirsty engine that produces a lot of noise and smoke as a byproduct.
JAL Convair 880 with its thirsty turbojet engines.
Systems wise it was pretty similar to a 707 or DC-8. Flight controls were manually operated through servo tabs. Hydraulically operated spoilers on the wings assisted roll control. Trim was by moving the horizontal stabilizer, a standard feature on almost all jet airliners. Basically a standard late 1950s jet. The initial version of the 880 only had trailing edge flaps which makes me think landing speeds were fairly high. One odd feature was a set of brakes on the nose gear, something early 727s used as well.
These 1960s jetliners looked so sleek and futuristic back then.
An improved version, the 880-M got a hydraulically boosted rudder and leading slats which would have given it better short field capabilities.
Commercially the 880 was a terrible move on Convair's part. Hughes wanted TWA to have something faster than everyone else but TWA only bought 30 of them. It was also a bad move on TWA's part. Hughes himself purchased the aircraft through his tool-and-die company and leased them back to TWA at a high price. The minority shareholders sued and Hughes ended up losing control of TWA.
Convair found few other customers for the 880. The market was pretty well saturated with Boeing and Douglas products at the time. Boeing was able to shorten the 707 to create the Boeing 720 which could fill the same niche as the Convair but for less money. Convair was able to sell a handful to Delta and JAL but total production for the 880 was a measly 65 aircraft.
Delta was one of the few customers for the 880. This ad shows happy looking white people enjoying the "club style" seating in first class.
Ultimately its niche would be filled by the highly successful 727 and DC-9 aircraft. Either one could do the same job as the Convair 880 while burning a lot less fuel. Sure the Convair was faster but it wasn't
that much faster. A 727-100 could go .90 mach (I've done it) and would cruise pretty close to what the Convair did.
I think this is a 990 cockpit but they look about the same.
By this point Convair had lost a ton of money. A general rule of thumb is you have to sell at least 500 copies of an airliner to break even on the development cost. They weren't even close.
880 and 990 in formation. The 990 was about 20 feet longer and had much improved engines.
Rather than cut their losses, Convair decided to double down and create the Convair 990. This was a stretched version of the 880 with more fuel capacity and even greater speed. A 990 can be distinguished by its distinctive "anti-shock body" fairings that extend back from the wings to reduce drag at transonic speeds. These were originally supposed to carry extra fuel, but they ran into wing flutter problems and had to scrap that idea.
Closeup of the anti-shock fairings. Sometimes called " Whitcomb bodys" or "Küchemann carrots" depending on who gets credit for inventing them.
In an interesting move, they took the GE CJ805 engines and turned them into turbofans but sticking a fan on the
back of the engine. It worked, although the resulting engine was still noisy, smokey and less efficient than the competition.
The CJ805-23 with its unique rear mounted fan. I found this picture on an Iranian military website so I'm probably on somebody's watch-list now.
I have to give them credit for ingenuity. Presumably this isn't the best way to build a turbofan because even GE doesn't do it this way any more.
The initial customer for the 990 was American Airlines. They felt the extra speed would allow them to shave 45 minutes off a flight from New York to the West Coast.
Convair 990 in American "Astro Jet" colors. There wasn't anything really space age about the 990. Systems wise it was pretty basic.
The Convair 990 to this day remains the fastest airliner after Concorde and its Soviet counterpart the TU-144. I believe the Convair 990 was capable of .94 Mach although it normally cruised slower than that.
Spantax Convair 990 on approach. The new engines still smoked quite a bit.
Commercially the 990 was an even bigger flop than the 880. A mere 37 were built. A DC-8 or 707 could carry more passengers on the same route for less fuel. It just wasn't worth burning that much fuel to go a little bit faster. Swissair bought a few and Spanish airline Spantax was the other main operator.
Swissair 990. You can see the unique anti-shock fairings on the back of the wing.
To put it in perspective, a Convair 990 reportedly burned 13,750 lbs of fuel per hour to go .84 mach with 149 passengers. A 727-200 could do it for roughly 10,000 lbs per hour. A modern 757 can carry 220 passengers and only burn 7,000 lbs per hour to do it. When fuel prices went up in the early 1970s everybody started selling off their Convairs.
Hail to the king baby!
Which leads us to this guy. Arguably the most famous Convair 880 is the one Elvis Presley bought from Delta and renamed the Lisa Marie. It's for sale, by the way, although it will never be airworthy again.
The very 1970s looking interior of the Lisa Marie. Yes, those are gold-plated seatbelt buckles.
The rest of the 880s and 990s scratched out a living for charter outfits and as test aircraft. I've read that they were popular for hauling cattle up from South America because they had a very sturdy cargo floor that could handle the weight. I guess that would make them the world's fastest bovines!
Many of these were converted to freighters and finished out their lives flying charters. Amazingly this one survived having the cargo door come open.
NASA used one as a test aircraft for years and famously used it to test the Space Shuttle's landing gear. It now sits guard duty at the Mojave Spaceport.
US Navy Convair 880 at the Naval Air Test Center. They used this one as a tanker and as a flying testbed.
Very few of these aircraft exist today. Not many were built and most were sold for scrap after they were worn out flying charters.
This is why we tend to see very incremental change in airliner design. Bet wrong and you can lose the farm. Boeing bet the company on the 707 and won. Convair bet the company on the 880 and lost. It costs a ton of money up front to design a new airliner and if nobody buys them you're out of luck and probably out of the business.
Convair lost a huge amount of money on this thing. Depending on who you believe they lost anywhere from $185 million to $415 million in 1960s dollars. It was the largest corporate loss at the time and Convair left the airline business for good. As the old hotrodder saying goes "Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?"