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 five cars, loaded at the front.

The nose of the original aircraft was replaced with one 8'8" 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 either sold on or transferred to associate company BUAF. It is noteworthy that two of the three aircraft still flying in January 2007 are ex-Ansett airframes. It is likely that the third of the Ansett aircraft would still be flying today, had it not been abandoned at Phomn-Penh in 1975. The first flight of the last conversion, number 21 for Ansett, 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 five cars. Some aircraft were pure freighters with only nine seats. One aircraft had 55 high-density seats and room for three 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]. Another Carvair is seen on The Prisoner in the episode The Chimes of Big Ben.

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 April 2007. The first (Zambian registered 9J-PAA, the 21st and final Carvair built) is in South Africa with Phoebus Apollo, and is being prepared for operation again after a lay-off of some two years. The second (N89FA / "Miss 1944", the 9th Carvair) 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 five 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, the 20th built) 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 18th Carvair, 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, seven were destroyed in crashes, (One each in Rotterdam, Holland 1962, Karachi, Pakistan 1967, Twin Falls, Canada 1968, Le Touquet, France 1971 and three in the USA, Miami, FL 1969, Venetie, AK 1997 and Griffin, GA also in 1997. Perhaps the best known Carvair crash was the one 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, killing both pilots.