707 Memories and photos -
There are some great posts and old photos above on here - superb!
I love the
Spearair story (although they are Holiday DC-8's)
I saw both of theirs on the deck at Tenerife Los Rodeos early 1973 after we had stepped off the BCAL 707C that had just flown us in from LGW on a Horizon Holidays Sunday charter.
I do have a snap of that somewhere of all 3 parked next to each other.
Seems the founder owners of Spearair, Sterling, and Conair were all big ''characters''.
Thankfully, like the Holiday 1-11's, there were not too many serious incidents with Holiday 707's from the 1960's onwards.
That is up until the terrible Azores crash in 1989 of an
Independent Air 707-331B flying Italian holidaymakers from Bergamo to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.
All 144 on board were killed when the 707 struck Mt. Pico Alto while on approach to Santa Maria Airport in the Azores for a scheduled stopover.
Causes included the Pilots failed to conduct an approach briefing, where they would have discussed the MSA of 3000 feet, then the incorrect setting of the Altitude Alert by 1000 feet too low, with the 707 descending in IMC to 2000 instead of the MSA of 3000 feet that was cleared by ATC.
An incorrect QNH given by ATC also led to the 707 being 240 feet lower than it should be, and the Crew's mistake in routing first to the VOR instead of the NDB.
Although the GPWS sounded multiple alarms before impact, the crew did not respond.
It was also noted that the AIRNAV charts being used for this airport were outdated by 27 years. The fact that their approach chart did not indicate that the primary NAV aid was the NDB, not the VOR; had this distinction been made clear, the crash would not have occurred as the plane would not have flown over Pico Alto in the first place.
Without any one of these factors the crash would not have happened.
In fact they almost missed the mountain anyway: had they been flying just 35 feet higher, they would have cleared the ridge.
Another question was why the Crew did not react to the GPWS alarms which sounded seven seconds before impact. Given how close they already were to clearing the mountain, time to react would have been sufficient to gain 35 feet and avoid the ridge. And yet no one in the Cockpit made any move to prevent the accident. Investigators turned to the NTSB for help in examining Independent Air’s pilot training.
The NTSB was disturbed to find that Independent Air was not teaching its pilots how to respond to GPWS alerts, even though this training was required by the FAA.
US investigators had previously recommended that the FAA check whether Operators were complying with this rule, but the FAA inspector assigned to Independent Air had NOT done so, and responses to GPWS were not covered in the airline’s training manual.
Independent Air did not have its own Simulator, so they sent it's Pilots to train at another airline which had configured its 707s differently, including their SIM.
When speeds and descent rates used at Independent Air were replicated in that SIM, the GPWS tended to go off during normal approaches. When this occurred, the Instructors either turned off the GPWS or outright told student pilots to ignore it.
This had conditioned pilots to believe that GPWS alerts during an approach were usually not real, and it was no surprise that when the alert sounded on flight 1851, the pilots reacted exactly as trained — by doing nothing at all.
There is an interesting Book, all about this little known crash by Francisco Cunha.
IDN 1851: The Santa Maria Air Disaster. (Il disastro delle Azorre): Independent Air 1851 - The Story of Portugalīs worst air disaster.
Other Holiday 707 incidents include a Sabena/
Sobelair 707-329 whichcrashed in 1978,during a bounced landing on the nose gear at TCI Tenerife Los Rodeos.
There is a home video film of the crash-landing taken by a passenger in the Terminal waiting for the same plane to go home to BRU on.
The nose gear collapsed and the 707 OO-SJE skidded down the runway, catching fire, but all 198 on board escaped OK. The 707 burnt out on the runway.
Windshear on final was a possible factor.
Landing Video here -
OO-SJE TCI
OO-SJE TCI
In 1979
Quebecair Holiday Charter Flight QB714 from YYZ, a 707-123B was approaching UVF St Lucia's Hewanorra Airport when it was caught by windshear.
When already over the runway threshold the aircraft stopped descending The Co-Pilot, who was pilot flying, retarded the throttles.
However at moment the aircraft had passed the windshear zone it suddenly slammed down onto the runway from a height of 6 m.
The Boeing 707 bounced twice, causing the nose gear to collapse. The Captain skilfully kept the Boeing 707 on the runway as it slid for 2000 feet and came to rest 4100 feet from the threshold. There was no fire. All 171 on board escaped OK.
The aircraft was a write off and was broken up at St. Lucia.
In 1981 another
Sobelair 707 OO-SJA operating flight OO1915 to Tenerife Sur TFS and Las Palmas LPA, took off from runway 02 at BRU Zaventem Airport.
As the airplane was climbing through an altitude of 7000 feet there was a violent explosion in the no. 3 engine. An uncontained failure had caused a serious fire in the engine.
The first extinguishing bottle was fired, but to no avail. The fire finally went out after the second bottle was fired.
The Crew returned immediately to the airport and were cleared for an emergency approach to runway 25L. While turning onto finals, the airplane overshot the extended centreline of runway 25L. The captain then decided to land on runway 25R.
After touchdown thrust reverse of engine nos. 1 and 4 was selected, and maximum wheel brakes were used to try to slow down.
The pilot was afraid that the aircraft couldn't be stopped on the runway and steered the Boeing 707 off the left side of the runway.
All 118 on board escaped OK.
The aircraft was damaged beyond repair and withdrawn from use at Brussels.
The engine failure was attributed to a fatigue failure of a fan blade of the 10th stage of the compressor.
All told, the 707 on holiday charter flights had quite an impressive safety record.