Aircraft accident involving a Lockheed Constellation near Cruzeiro do Sul

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Aircraft accident involving a Lockheed Constellation near Cruzeiro do Sul
Constellation L-049.jpg

A Lockheed L-049 Constellation of the Panair do Brasil, similar to the accident machine
Accident summary
Accident type Unsuccessful emergency landing after multiple engine failures
place Acre State, BR-364 State Road between Cruzeiro do Sul and Tarauacá , BrazilBrazil 1960Brazil 
date May 29, 1972
Fatalities 9
Survivors 9
Aircraft
Aircraft type United States 48United States Lockheed L-049 Constellation
operator Brazil 1960Brazil Amazonese Importação e Exportação
Mark Brazil 1960Brazil PP-PDG
Departure airport Cruzeiro do Sul Airport , Acre , BrazilBrazil 1960Brazil 
Destination airport Rio Branco Airport , Acre , BrazilBrazil 1960Brazil 
Passengers 15th
crew 3
Lists of aviation accidents

The air accident a Lockheed Constellation in Cruzeiro do Sul took place on May 29, 1972 when a cargo plane of Amazonese Importação e Exportação type Lockheed L-049 Constellation on a flight from Cruzeiro do Sul to Rio Branco in the Brazilian state of Acre in the Amazon region crashed. In the accident, 9 out of 18 people on board the machine were killed. This is the last known fatal incident involving a Lockheed Constellation of the L-049 / L-149 series.

plane

The machine was a Lockheed L-049 Constellation with the factory number 2037, which was built in 1945 for Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) and delivered to Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) on January 15, 1946 with the aircraft registration number N88837 . The Pan Am converted the aircraft produced as the Lockheed L-149 Constellation after delivery to the Lockheed L-049 Constellation and gave the machine the name Clipper Challenge . When the airline passed the aircraft on to its subsidiary Panair do Brasil , the Constellation came to Brazil, where operations began on January 11, 1954 with the new registration number PP-PDG and the new name of Bandeirante João Amaro Maciel Parente . Panair do Brasil had to file for bankruptcy in 1965, after which the machine was taken out of service and stored at Rio de Janeiro-Galeão airport in July 1965 . ASL Arruda Industria registered the machine as the next owner on April 28, 1969. The last owner was the Amazonese Importação e Exportação on November 20, 1971. The four-engine long - haul aircraft was equipped with four air-cooled 18-cylinder twin star engines of the Curtiss-Wright R-3350-BD1 type, each with an output of 2500 hp (1838 kW).

Passengers and crew

A cargo flight was carried out with the machine, on which 15 passengers were taken on board. There was a three-person crew on board the machine, consisting of a flight captain, a first officer and a flight engineer, but not a single flight attendant who should have been on board for the 15 passengers.

Before departure

At the airport in the city of Cruzeiro do Sul , deep in the Amazon, there was not enough aviation fuel available for days in May 1972 due to delivery bottlenecks. For this reason, the operation of the Lockheed L-049 Constellation PP-PDG of the Amazonese Importação e Exportação had to be suspended for four days. When tankers arrived from Porto Velho on May 29th with a fresh shipment of aviation fuel , the machine was refueled directly from the truck.

the accident

After the refueling, the machine started and rose to an altitude of 8,000 feet (approx. 2,440 meters) when engine number 3 suddenly failed. Ten minutes later, another engine failed and the machine began to lose altitude. Shortly afterwards, the other engines also failed. Since the pilots could not maintain the flight altitude, an attempt was made to reduce the flight weight by opening a cargo door and throwing parts of the cargo overboard. It did not succeed in stopping the machine's continuing loss of height. The crew finally tried to land on the BR-364 federal road between Cruzeiro do Sul and Tarauacá . The emergency landing failed, the Lockheed Constellation brushed trees, broke apart and went up in flames. The entire crew and six passengers were killed, nine other passengers survived the incident.

root cause

The cause of the accident was determined to be a multiple engine failure due to contaminated aircraft fuel. As the fuel was pumped directly into the machine instead of into the airport gas station's tanks, particles that were blown up from the bottom of the truck's tank got into the Constellation's wing tanks. You should correctly have pumped the fuel into the tanks of the airport filling station first and waited some time for the particles to settle on the ground. Another machine, which was also refueled directly from the truck immediately after the Constellation, had to abort its planned take-off because an engine had already failed on the ground.

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