By Fons Schaefers

Introduction

In the 1970s, civil transport aircraft spotting was quite different from what it is today. Airport security was much more relaxed. Although airport ramps were off limits, at many airports it was easy to find vantage photography spots near runways. Even hangars were not always off-limits. The jet age was less than two decades old. First-generation jets ¹ were still being produced and flew in increasing numbers, all but up for phasing out. There was one exception, though: the Convair jets.

In the U.S., American Airlines had disposed of its Convair 990 fleet after only five years of operation. Most went to Europe and the Middle East. Delta had disposed of its fleet of 880s in 1973/74. TWA laid up its fleet of 25 880s around the same time, triggered by soaring jet fuel prices following the 1973 Arab-Israel war. The 880 consumed more fuel than its peers, such as the 707, so it was the first to go. All 25 were parked in one place. In those days, a congregation of so many identical airplanes was extremely rare.

U.S. Visit

Having been a civil aircraft spotter since 1973 and having visited the more exciting airports of Europe, in 1977 I decided to explore another spotters’ heaven: the U.S. Once the hurdle of obtaining a visa was taken (still an issue in those days; ESTA would be invented much later), I could plan my visit. My plan was to cross the entire U.S. in 30 days by Greyhound bus. High on the list were the military storage facility at Davis-Monthan AFB, Tucson, AZ (with a bus tour every second Saturday of the month), some major airports, the Grand Canyon (hoping for a scenic flight by Ford Trimotor, but alas…), Detroit Willow Run (for the Zantop prop fleet), Niagara Falls and Miami (for its corrosion corner). Also on the list was Kansas City.

TWA Convair 880s

Why Kansas City? JP Airline-Fleets, the contemporary spotter’s bible, in its 1976 edition, listed TWA’s congregation of 25 Convair 880s was right there:

In November 1976, the monthly spotter’s magazine Aviation Letter in # 120 reported:

In February 1977, the news was:

So, with some luck, the 880s were waiting to be logged and photographed when I would pass Kansas City on my way from New York to Tucson.

MCI, May 12, 1977

I left New York on Tuesday, May 10, at 7:00 pm, allowing me a brief, sunset visit to STL the next day. Another night on the bus, and I was in Kansas City. A short ride on the KCI Airport Express brought me to the new Mid-Continent International Airport (MCI) with its three circular terminals: A, B and C.

Looking east from the terminal area, I could see the Convairs. Through my binoculars, I identified the four nearest by registration number. But how nice would it be to have a closer look and take pictures? In terminal B, TWA had an information booth. I boldly stepped up and asked them if it would be possible to visit the Convairs. Quite to my surprise, the lady made one telephone call and then announced it was sorted. She handed me a TWA message note and said, “Take a taxi to the maintenance area and ask there for Larry Andrews.” (or words to that effect).

And so I did. Larry was waiting for me and handed me a visitor pass. Together we walked to the Convairs on the ramp east of the new hangar with its outstanding architecture. The sun was shining, casting sharp shadows. I noted the 880s were roughly parked in three rows. We started walking along the front row, with N808TW being the first, and I started taking pictures.

My tactic was not to take a picture of each airplane from the same angle, but rather a mix so that each airplane, including its registration mark on the tail or fleet number on the nose, would later be traceable. Conscious of time and intending not to ask too much of Larry, I went at quite a pace. At the end of the front row, there were some ships parked at an angle to that row. There we moved to the furthest ship and then returned between the middle and the back, constantly taking pictures.

Halfway, I changed the film from black and white to color slides. Larry shadowed me and offered to take a picture of me in front of one of the 880s.

When we were back to the point where we started, I spotted a set of maintenance steps and asked Larry if I could climb those to take some overview pictures. He agreed.

In all, I took about 35 pictures in what I estimate lasted about 20 minutes. Larry was so kind as to drive me back to the terminal area. I thanked him profusely. From a spot close to terminal C I took one final slide of the Convairs from a distance against a backdrop of the characteristic water tower and the KCAC building (which, as I learned much later, housed TWA administration) before continuing my trip through the United States.

One Month Later

Once back at home, with the pictures developed and returned to me (digital cameras were still futuristic), I could make a rough sketch of the parking pattern. For 23 ships, I positively fixed their location. For N828TW and N816TW, I was not so sure.

43 Years Later

Life went on, and occasionally, when seeing an article in a magazine about Convair 880s, I hoped there was an aerial picture so that I could validate my sketch. But it was in vain. Even Jon Proctor’s book on 880s and 990s did not have one, nor was he aware of any when I asked him at the WAHS convention in Portland, OR, in 2011. But in May 2020, I was lucky. Searching the internet, I found a picture on the website of the TWA Museum, 43 years after my visit. It had been posted in May 2018.

Now I could verify the actual pattern against my original sketch. Looking again at the overview slide, N828TW could be confirmed both by its location and number. But I had misplaced the location of N816TW. This was the only 880 that was not in any of my pictures. Or so I thought. It turned out that I did have a picture of it, taken straight from the rear, so that no registration marks were visible. By gauging the relative location of neighbor ships and by a process of elimination, it had to be #816. Puzzle solved.

Fate of the Convairs

Only twelve days after my visit, TWA sold the first of the 25 Convairs, and soon after, it was broken up on site: N811TW. Jon Proctor describes this as a tough job as its skin was much thicker than that of other airplane types, for which the demolition company was not prepared.

In 1978, N818TW was ferried to Van Nuys, CA, for conversion to a full freighter. Fifteen more Convairs were ferried to Harlingen, TX. Later, they were all ferried to the much drier climate of Mojave, CA. The eight ships remaining on the MCI ramp were broken up in 1979. Four of the Mojave ships were ferried to Atlantic City (3) or Laurinburg-Maxton (1) for use in FAA safety experiments. They were later destroyed, except for 803’s nose, which is kept in Teterboro, NJ. Of the remaining 12, the forward sections of two more ended up in museums: 871 in the Delta Flight Museum in Atlanta, and 817 in the Tillamook Museum in Oregon. Nine others were completely broken up around 2000. In 2024, only N828TW is still intact in Mojave, as N815AJ.

TWA Museum

When I contacted the TWA Museum in May 2020, I learned that Larry worked in material management at the time of my visit. He had retired since and sadly died. Reflecting on the warm welcome reception I received in 1977, I now surmise that perhaps TWA was so eager to sell the ships that anybody who asked to see them was considered a potential buyer and deserved to be shown around.

Last year, I visited the TWA Museum at the old Kansas City airport. On that occasion, I passed by the MCI maintenance area and saw a relic of the Convairs: Convair Drive. How apt.

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Footnote

1: As defined by Airbus, ref. Generations of Jet – accidentstats.airbus.com: Comet, Caravelle, BAC- 111, Trident, VC-10, 707, 720, DC-8, Convair 880/990.

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Sources

• Aviation Letter issue 120 (Nov. 1976), 123 (Feb. 1977) and 144 (Nov. 1978).
• Convair 880 & 990, Great Airliners Volume One, Jon Proctor, 1996.

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Fons Schaefers: [email protected], January 2025

By Ron Suttell

Cards like these are commonly referred to in the collecting hobby as “pilot trading cards” due to their intended use for flight crews to hand them out to passengers, with a signature line on the back. These unique cards were produced over the years by Alaska’s former ad agency, Cohen-Dwyer Advertising, beginning with three sepia-tone cards in 1996. The first issued cards featured three different vintage Alaska Airlines aircraft (Bellanca Skyrocket, Douglas DC-3 and Boeing 727-90C) and were intended as promotional giveaways to celebrate Alaska’s upcoming 65^th anniversary.

In the ensuing years, full-color cards were produced in the late 1990s with stylized wings logo “Alaska’s World” (an ad campaign during that era) in the upper left corner of the card. Only two Alaska cards were issued with this logo, a Boeing 737-400 and McDonnell Douglas MD-80.

Around the same time, subsidiary carrier Horizon issued a card of its Dash 8Q-200 (de Havilland DHC-8-200 turbo-prop) with a similar card format.  This particular card is considered the rarest one.

Alaska and Horizon both continued with this format-gold frame with a polished gold inset for a few more cards but without the “Alaska’s World” wings logo. Among them are two different cards of the Boeing 737-900 with the gold seal “Official Launch Carrier” in the lower right corner. The first of these (below left) was issued in very limited quantities and only distributed to attendees at the May 16, 2001 Boeing delivery roll-out ceremony.  It is also very rare.

Beginning in 2002, Alaska began issuing these cards in a different format with full-color layout on the card front, initially with artist images of its many different special schemes, and later with actual inflight photographs or ground views of each different aircraft type in the fleet. At the time, this was especially important to promote the company’s strong partnership with Disneyland Resort since many of its planes sported Disney schemes.

Unfortunately for the meticulous trading card collector, this is where it starts to get a bit complicated for those desiring to have the complete set. Some of the Disney cards began to show up with variations, not readily caught at first, but seen by the astute eye of true hobbyists. For example, the card with the Boeing 737-400 Magic of Disneyland (better known as the Tinkerbell scheme) was issued with four different variations-even different backs on two of them, while the Alaska Statehood cards have blue/white title variations. This is attributed to the cards being reissued in different years, or in some cases just to produce a better image.

Similarly, the card with Spirit of Make-a-Wish scheme has two different backs of the same card.

Other variations appear on the Boeing 737-400 Salmon Thirty Salmon cards and the 75^th anniversary scheme 737-800 Starliner which includes two different cards. One of the most rarely seen variants of this card collection, issued in 2009, is below on the right.

The 737-400 alaskaair.com Dot Com scheme has an early gold frame card with the same image of the plane as appears later on an updated card in 2005.

Another interesting variant was a card honoring famous Olympic athlete Apolo Ohno, who became a spokesperson for Alaska Airlines for a brief time. One of its planes, a Boeing 737-800 (N596AS), was decorated with a “Follow Apolo” motif in 2010.

The last cards to be issued (see below) were in 2013, and are less common today.

From a purely technical standpoint, the Alaska Airlines cards are in a uniquely separate category from actual hobby collector cards due to their larger size (3-1/4” x 4-1/4” vs. standard baseball card size of 2-1/2” x 3-1/2”) and also of thinner card stock, but are nevertheless highly collectible. Unfortunately, the cards were never numbered, nor is their print run known, making it difficult to appraise their true value other than what may appear on eBay and other auction sites. By comparison, several other airlines have produced more traditional “baseball card size” issues (Delta, FedEx, Hawaiian, Northwest, United, and recently Frontier of wildlife on the tails of their planes), but only Delta has seen fit to number their cards consecutively so their cards are very popular with the hobbyists-especially for several early issue, low production cards that are difficult to find. Alaska did issue a set of more traditionally-sized collector cards in 1997 to celebrate its 65^th anniversary. This 25-card boxed set of colorful cards includes past and present planes in Alaska’s history and comes in both standard blue titles as well as special limited edition gold embossed versions.

From the number of cards in my personal collection, with known variants and re-issued, updated versions of the same aircraft type, I calculate that there are 46 total different cards in Alaska’s odd-size collection as listed below:

• Bellanca “Skyrocket”
• Boeing 727-90C “Golden Nugget Jet”
• Boeing 737-400 “Alaska’s World”
• Boeing 737-400 “Combi”
• Boeing 737-400 “Magic of Disneyland” Tinkerbell (4)
• Boeing 737-400 “Salmon Thirty Salmon” (3)
• Boeing 737-400 “Spirit of Alaska Statehood” (2)
• Boeing 737-400 “Spirit of Disneyland” (2)
• Boeing 737-400 “Spirit of Make-a-Wish” (2)
• Boeing 737-400 alaskaair.com “Dot Com” (3)
• Boeing 737-400 Freighter
• Boeing 737-400 standard livery
• Boeing 737-700 Portland “Timbers Jet”
• Boeing 737-700 standard livery (2)
• Boeing 737-800 “Follow Apolo” (2)
• Boeing 737-800 “Spirit of Seattle”
• Boeing 737-800 “Starliner 75” (2)
• Boeing 737-800 alaskaair.com “Dot Com”
• Boeing 737-800 ETOPS “Adventure of Disneyland Resort” Cars movie characters (2)
• Boeing 737-800 ETOPS “Salmon Thirty Salmon II” 
• Boeing 737-800 ETOPS “Spirit of the Islands”
• Boeing 737-800 ETOPS Hawaiian lei on tail
• Boeing 737-800 standard livery
• Boeing 737-900 “Spirit of Disneyland II”
• Boeing 737-900 standard livery (3)
• Boeing 737-900ER standard livery
• Bombardier Q400
• Douglas DC-3
• McDonnell Douglas MD-80
• McDonnell Douglas MD-80 “Alaska’s World”

There are also 8 total cards issued by Horizon Air:

• Bombardier CRJ-700 vertical card
• Bombardier Q200/Q400 vertical card
• Bombardier Q400 “Celebrating 25 Years”
• De Havilland DHC-8Q-200 Horizon Air wings logo
• De Havilland DHC-8Q-200 “Dash 8” (2)
• Fokker F28-4000 (2) 

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Ron Suttell, an airline historian specializing in Alaska Airlines, can be reached at [email protected].

By Robert G. Waldvogel

As one of the first generation of regional jets that flew some two decades before those produced by Canadair, Embraer, and Dornier in the 1990s, the Aerospatiale SN.601 Corvette straddled the line between the business and regional markets and was consequently the smallest to have served commercially.

Its seed was planted when the French government, continuing its strategy of re-establishing the country’s post-war aviation industry began with piston airliners such as the Breguet Deux Ponts, the Sud-Est Armagnac, and the Sud-Ouest Bretagne requested that aircraft manufacturers submit proposals for a compact twin-turbofan liaison/trainer.  Then-separate Sud-Aviation and Nord-Aviation elected to jointly develop an executive jet designated the SN.600 Diplomate in January of 1968 when French indigenous SNECMA designed a suitable power plant for it, the M49 Larzac.

Displayed for the first time in model form at that year’s Hanover Air Show, it featured what became the standard business jet configuration—a low wing, a narrow fuselage, a forward, left door, swept aerodynamic surfaces, and two aft-mounted turbofans.  It most closely resembled the Cessna Citation 500.  It also had very early and very small-capacity regional jet application.

Predicted sales, which later proved unrealistically inflated, were expected to number some 400 from worldwide operators over and above the initial 60 expected from the French military.

Reflecting its joint Sud- and Nord-Aviation company origins, the aircraft, with its “SN” designation, first took to the sky in prototype form on July 16, 1970, but the lengthy development of its intended M49 powerplant necessitated the use of two 2,200 thrust-pound Pratt and Whitney Canada JT15D-1s instead.  While its maiden flight was successful, its test program did not continue in this vein.  During stall trials eight months later, on March 22, 1971, it crashed, ending in its demise.

A protracted period of redesign, before which Sud- and Nord-Aviation merged to form Aerospatiale, resulted in a 5.5-foot longer fuselage, giving the now re-designated SN.601 Corvette 100 a 45.4-foot overall length; a 42-foot wingspan, to which tip fuel tanks could be optionally installed to increase range; two 2,300 thrust-pound JT15D-4 turbofans; and a 13,450-pound gross weight.  Range, with its maximum payload, was just over 1,000 miles.

So-configured, the second and third prototypes respectively flew on December 20, 1972 and March 7, 1973.  The first production example followed suit eight months later, on November 9, 1973, and French certification was received another six months after that, on May 28, 1974.

The type’s problem-plagued program was hardly helped by competition, particularly on its executive side.  The similarly-configured, French-designed Falcon 20, distributed through Pan American Falcon Jets, enjoyed a brand name recognition advantage and was able to penetrate the coveted US market.

Attempts to conclude similar agreements were unsuccessful, specifically with Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV), Piper Aircraft, and its own Atlanta-based US Corvette Incorporated North American aircraft completion, sales, and distribution center.  Although its final one, with Oklahoma-based Air Center, Inc., seemed more promising, it never received a single production-standard aircraft out of the intended seventy.

As the third most expensive business jet after the Cessna Citation 500 and the Learjet 24, it was subjected to cost overruns and the French government gave serious thought to canceling the program.

After receiving only 24 orders, Aerospatiale did just that.  A report produced by the government’s Court of Audit stated that the company’s management lacked an adequate understanding of the risks involved in the face of competition from comparable US, British, and other French designs, saying, “It is certain that the Corvette program is, and will remain, a major commercial and financial disaster.”

In its regional jet role, it found limited application by third-level carriers seeking to offer point-to-point, hub-bypassing service on routes too thin to support larger aircraft.

Air Alpes, for example, which took delivery of two Corvette 100s in 1974 and another two in 1975, operated routes on its own behalf from Paris and those, such as Lyons-Brussels, on Air France’s, its aircraft appearing in its livery on one side and its own on its other.  Accommodating a dozen passengers, they featured two rows of single seats next to the five oval windows on either side, divided by a central aisle.  The cockpit count was two, but there were no flight attendants in the cabin.

Other operators included Air Alsace, Air Champagne, and TAT Touraine Air Transport in France, and Sterling Airways in Denmark.  Airbus Industrie used five aircraft as corporate shuttles between 1981 and 2009.

Although an 18-passenger, Corvette 200, with a 6.7-foot fuselage stretch, was proposed, it never proceeded beyond the concept stage, since its original 100 series ceased production in 1977 after 40 aircraft had been built, ending France’s second-worst commercial airliner program after that of the 150-passenger Dassault-Breguet Mercure 100, whose production run was only 12, including two prototypes.

Plagued by prototype accident; along, corrective development period; a change in power plant type; costly operation; failure to establish a North American distribution venue; strong competition; management ignorance; and capacity that proved inadequate, the Aerospatiale SN.601 Corvette nevertheless served as an example of one of the three regional jet origins: an all-new design, the conversion of an existing turboprop one, or the use of a business jet platform.

Air France/Air Alsace SN 601-100, F-BVPF seen at Basel-Mulhouse (BSL) in April 1976.
Note the lack of wingtip tanks.
Photo Courtesy: Eduard Marmet

TAT – Touraine Air Transport
Aerospatiale SN-601 Corvette 100, F-BTTT seen on May 31, 1978, at Basel-Mulhouse (BSL).
Once again note the lack of wingtip tanks.
Photo Courtesy: Eduard Marmet

Aero Vision SN 601 Corvette, F-GPLA seen at Hamburg, Germany on October 10, 2007.
Photo Courtesy: Christian Muller

Uni Air SN 601 Corvette, F-PVPG seen at Faro, Portugal on November 30, 1987.
Photo Courtesy: Pedro Aragao

Sterling Airways Aerospatiale Sn-610 Corvette, OY-SBT seen at Copenhagen, Denmark on September 22, 1984.
Photo Courtesy: Dirk Grothe | Aviation Photography

Sterling Airways Aerospatiale Sn-610 Corvette, OY-SBR seen at Copenhagen, Denmark on September 22, 1984.
Photo Courtesy: Dirk Grothe | Aviation Photography

Former Sterling Airways Aerospatiale SN-610 Corvette, OY-SBR seen at The Fly Museum in Stauning, Denmark on August 27, 2018.
Photo Courtesy: Dirk Grothe | Aviation Photography

Flight deck of former Sterling Airways Aerospatiale SN-610 Corvette, OY-SBR seen at The Fly Museum in Stauning, Denmark on August 27, 2018.
Photo Courtesy: Dirk Grothe | Aviation Photography