Trans Canada Air Lines Flight 831

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Trans Canada Air Lines Flight 831
CF-TJN DC-8-54CF Trans Canada Airlines LHR 04MAY63 (5577579471) .jpg

The affected machine six months before the crash
Accident summary
Accident type Loss of control
place near Ste-Thérèse-de-Blainville , Québec , CanadaCanada 1921Canada 
date November 29, 1963
Fatalities 118
Survivors 0
Aircraft
Aircraft type United StatesUnited States Douglas DC-8F-54 Jet Trader
operator Canada 1921Canada Trans Canada Air Lines
Mark Canada 1921Canada CF-TJN
Departure airport Montreal-Dorval Airport , Quebec , CanadaCanada 1921Canada 
Destination airport Toronto Airport , Ontario , CanadaCanada 1921Canada 
Passengers 111
crew 7th
Lists of aviation accidents

The Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 831 was a domestic airliner of Trans Canada Air Lines from Montreal to Toronto . On November 29, 1963, a serious aircraft accident occurred on this flight when a Douglas DC-8F-54 Jet Trader (CF-TJN) crashed shortly after take-off due to a loss of control. All 118 people on board were killed in the accident. At that time it was the most serious aircraft accident involving a Douglas DC-8 and up to the Multinational Force and Observers flight 1285R it was the most serious aircraft accident in Canada.

machine

The crashed machine was a Douglas DC-8F-54 Jet Trader machine with serial number 45654 , which was assembled at the Douglas plant in Long Beach , California and which was rolled out on January 16, 1963. The first flight was carried out on February 5, 1963. It was the 179th Douglas DC-8 from ongoing production. The machine was delivered to Trans Canada Air Lines on February 8th. She received the aircraft registration CF-TJN and the fleet number 814 . The four-engine long-range - narrow-body aircraft was equipped with four engines of the type -3 JT3D Pratt & Whitney facilities. By the time of the accident, the machine had completed 2,174 operating hours.

crew

There were seven crew members on board the machine. The cockpit crew was three people:

  • The 47.5-year-old flight captain John Douglas Snider was a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force between 1940 and 1944 and had mainly flown bombers during that time. He began his employment with Trans Canada Air Lines on October 27, 1944. By his death, he had completed 17,206 flight hours, 458 of which with Douglas DC-8 passenger planes and a further 103 hours with the DC-8F cargo version. Snider lived in Toronto.
  • The 35.5-year-old first officer Harry Jacob Dyck flew for Trans Canada Air Lines since February 9, 1953. Since then he had completed 8,302 hours and 58 minutes of flight experience, of which 336 were with Douglas DC-8 passenger aircraft and a further 61 hours and 54 minutes with the DC-8F cargo version. Dyck's last residence was in Leamington, Ontario .
  • The 29.5-year-old Second Officer Edward Desmond Baxter had worked in various positions at Trans Canada Air Lines in the course of his professional career, including as a truck driver, cashier and salesman. On July 8, 1957, he was hired as a pilot for the airline and initially flew Canadair North Star machines before he received further training for the Vickers Viscount . In June 1963, he received the type rating for the Douglas DC-eighth By the time of his death he had gathered 3,603 hours of flight experience, of which 133 hours were in the cockpit of Douglas DC-8 passenger planes and 144 hours with the DC-8F cargo version. He had complained of chest pain in December 1961, but a medical examination revealed that it was simply a muscle spasm. Baxter lived in Toronto.

The four-person cabin crew consisted of the purser Imants E. Zirnis and the flight attendants Kathleen P. Creighton, Linda J. Slaught and Lorna J. Wallington.

Passengers

111 passengers had started the flight. Of these, all but three were Canadian citizens:

nationality Passengers crew total
CanadaCanada Canada 108 7th 115
United StatesUnited States United States 2 - 2
IndiaIndia India 1 - 1
total 111 7th 118

the accident

At 6:28 p.m. the machine began to take off from runway 06R at Montreal-Dorval Airport. The machine rotated and the crew reported to air traffic control when they reached an altitude of 3,000 feet (approx. 910 meters) and received clearance to fly a left turn. Shortly after this clearance, the machine deviated from its intended flight path and began to descend rapidly. At 18:33, the DC-8 hit the ground with a pitch angle of about 55 degrees (± 7 degrees) and a speed of about 470 to 485 knots (about 870 to 898 km / h).

The machine had crashed into a swampy field in Sainte-Thérèse , Québec , about 100 meters from the main road that leads into the Laurentine Mountains .

Victim

Of the 118 deaths, 76 came from the Toronto metropolitan area. The airline said the bodies were so badly mutilated that identification was virtually impossible. Eight other people booked for the flight did not reach the airport on time due to a traffic jam on the main artery of Montréal.

Accident investigation

One witness testified that shortly before the crash she saw what looked like "a long red streak in the sky". The white and silver machine with a red belly band left a crater with a depth of 1.8 meters and a width of 46 meters, which soon began to fill with rainwater. The crash site was only a few fields away from a village with 12,000 inhabitants. The main sections of the wreck were about halfway between Highway 11, now Québec Route 117, and the Laurentian Autoroute (now Québec Highway 15). The rescue was made difficult by deep mud at the crash site and by a kerosene-fed fire that lasted for hours despite heavy rain.

Although parts of the aircraft were scattered over a large area around the crater, the commission of inquiry found that the aircraft had been structurally intact when it hit the ground. The machine was too badly damaged to determine the cause of the accident beyond any doubt. At the time of the accident, no cockpit voice recorders or flight data recorders were required for machines approved in Canada and were therefore not installed in the machine, which made the investigation of the crash more difficult. In the official final report published in 1965, therefore, no clear cause of the accident was named, but reference was made to problems with the inclination trim, which aligns the aircraft nose up or down. Such a cause of the accident appeared plausible, as a malfunction of exactly this assembly three months later in 1964 led to the crash of another Douglas DC-8 of Eastern Air Lines on Eastern Air Lines flight 304 . An icing up of the pitot tubes or a failure of the course top were given as alternative causes of the accident .

Commemoration

The airline had a memorial stone erected in the Sainte-Thérèse cemetery for the victims of the crash.

swell

Coordinates: 45 ° 40 ′ 52.7 "  N , 73 ° 53 ′ 54.2"  W.