Aviation Traders Carvair

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Aer Lingus Carvair loading a car at Bristol Airport, Bristol, England, in 1965

The Aviation Traders ATL-98 Carvair was a Douglas DC-4 / C-54 converted into an air ferry by Freddie Laker's Aviation Traders (Engineering) Limited, allowing it to carry 25 passengers and 5 cars, loaded at the front.

The nose of the original aircraft was replaced with one 8 feet 8 inches longer, the cockpit being raised to allow a sideways hinged nose door. More powerful brakes and an enlarged tail, often thought to be a Douglas DC-7 unit, but actually a completely new design, was added. The engines were four Pratt & Whitney R-2000 Twin Wasp radial engines. The prototype conversion first flew on 21 Jun 1961. Twenty-one Carvairs were produced, with production of aircraft 1, 11 and 21 at Southend (England) and the balance at Stansted (England). The final three aircraft were delivered to the Australian airline Ansett, who supplied their own DC-4s to ATL for conversion, unlike the previous 18 aircraft that were purchased by ATL and sold on. The first flight of the last conversion was on the 12 July 1968.

The Carvair was used by Aer Lingus, British United Air Ferries (BUAF) and British Air Ferries (BAF) among others, and was used in Congo-Kinshasa during 1960-1964, under contract to the United Nations. Aircraft for Aer Lingus were quickly convertible between 55 seats and 22 seats with 5 cars. Some aircraft were pure freighters with only nine seats. One aircraft had 55 high-density seats and room for 3 cars. British Air Ferries were the last operator in Europe of the aircraft, keeping them flying into the 1970s - a British United Carvair makes an appearance in the 1964 James Bond movie Goldfinger^[1].

1 Extant aircraft
2 Less Fortunate Carvairs
3 References
4 External Links

[edit] Extant aircraft

According to Carvair expert and author Niall Booth, there are three airworthy examples as of November 2006. The first (Zambian registered 9J-PAA) is in South Africa with Phoebus Apollo, and is being prepared for operation again after a lay-off of some 2 years. The second (N89FA / "Miss 1943") is based in Denison, Texas, and flies with Gator Global Flying Services on ad-hoc cargo charters throughout the United States. This was the aircraft that participated in the 2005 World Freefall Convention in Rantoul, Illinois, setting the record for the largest number of people to fly in a Carvair when it carried 80 skydivers and 5 crew to an altitude of 10,500 feet. Piloted by Captain John Harms and Captain Chris Rice, the climb took 38 minutes. The skydivers exited the large freight door at the rear of the aircraft at 110 knots. The last of the airworthy Carvairs (N898AT) is based with Brooks Fuel in Fairbanks, AK and flies fuel oil to remote locations, but was recently reported as being up for sale again.

The cockpit section of the 8th Carvair, CF-EPV remains near the former Halesworth Airfield in Essex, England, and the ex Aviaco / Dominicana HI-172 is rumoured to still exist at the Hotel El Embajador in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, as a bar / discoteque.

[edit] Less Fortunate Carvairs

Of the 21 airframes, 7 met their demise in violent fashions, crashing respectively in Holland 1962, Pakistan 1967, Canada 1968 and the USA in 1971, with another two aircraft lost there in 1997. Perhaps the most famous Carvair crash was at Griffin, Georgia in April of '97, where on its take-off run, the 5th production Carvair had catastrophic engine failure, failed to become properly airborne, and crashed into a vacant Piggly Wiggly supermarket past the airport perimeter, sadly killing both pilots.