The Convair's ?

[Exhaustgases]

Just something I find strange, and there wasn't a lot of news about them either.
CV440 Crashes on Final Approach to Toledo-Express Airport - September 16, 2019
No report from pilots nothing wrong with the plane, and crashes not even 1 mile from the airport on final approach.

This one not as close to the airport but still, some strange things happening to the old prop planes.
February 8, 2019 crash of Conquest Air Cargo CV340/C-131B N145GT.

This one was laziness and stupidity of people involved. But the other 2 ???
Dutch Aviodrome CV340 Crashes in South Africa - February 10, 2019

 

[Cujet]

It's probably easy to draw a conclusion that old aircraft are mechanically unsafe. However, I would guess that the crash cause is not the same for all of the old radial engine'd planes.

I've been thinking about various crashes lately and the relationship of aircraft age to safety. From the AOPA: "If we look at accidents that were caused by real mechanical failure and not where the pilot mismanaged the fuel or forgot to add oil, the trend appears to be slightly downward" (as an airframe ages)

High profile structural failures of pipline or low level observation aircraft really don't represent a fleet well. They accumulate a very high number of hours in turbulence. I'd place some blame on inadequate maintenance for those. Aluminum has a finite fatigue life.

More nebulous is the money spent and it's association with safety. Older aircraft are generally inexpensive and one can get a lot of capability for minimal expense. But pouring money into a low-value airframe is often seen as foolish. That could possibly lead to a poorly maintained aircraft due to lack of investment. I know a few like this right now. Owners simply can't justify the cost.

 

[Dinoburner]

It will be interesting what happened to the B-17 that went down in CT a couple weeks ago.

 

[fdcg27]

These Convair twins are all old airplanes now but were good enough that many underwent conversion to turboprop engines and flew on into the eighties.
About a thousand of these things were built with the opening offering being the CV240 which begat the CV340 and then the final version from Convair, the CV 440. I got to fly on one of those in the early eighties CVG>BKL with an early deregulation startup called Wright.
The most common turboprop conversion used the GM Allison 501 engine (GM once made all sorts or neat stuff) and was designated the CV580. Allegheny and North Central both had significant fleets of CV580 aircraft and they were seen on the contracted services of the majors up through the late eighties.
Anyway, this piston Convair was a very old airplane and her pilots were as well.
We'll see an accident report in due course but we should also bear in mind that new transports operated by young crews crash as well.
As a CV440, this would have had Pratt radials which required a lot of fiddling in operation to keep them happy and this aircraft also had very limited single engine capabilities if one were lost.

 

[Exhaustgases]

The crash on approach with very few thousands of horizontal linear feet to go, is just plain strange. In any of the crashes you can not blame the airframe, and the years and the flights on them prove they are a very solid well designed plat form. Of course one thing that could have caused a last minute approach crash is a medical issue with the pilot. Radial engines? Can only blame all the people involved with overhauling and maintaining them, well yes operators as well. Just don't have the same quality of people working on them now as back in the old days, and not saying all them were perfect either.
Then there is what seems to be a hidden push to get rid of the old high powered piston powered aircraft, reminiscent to the old waning days of steam trains (when they were cut up and scrapped en mass, with only a handful left), that started with the grounding of the old firebombers years ago. And it wasn't even an old piston plane that pushed that decision, it was the wings coming off the 130 turbo prop Hawkins and Powers plane. What is driving that push is difficult to figure out, some would think its the leaded fuel issue, it seems its more than that though.
Strange airplane crashes etc. read a book called "The Great Lakes Triangle" By Jay Gourley, he actually writes about planes with pilots that are with high hour experience going down for no reason. Its just sad and weird that 2 of these type planes were lost with in such a short time period, both under strange circumstances. And just like the B17 an engine out should not affect the design ability of the plane to maintain altitude, a non feathered prop is the only thing that will cause enough drag to do that.

 

[Yah-Tah-Hey]

Frontier was using the Convair 580 in the intermountain west in the 1980s and they were an excellent airplane for that service. Flying in and out of the Steamboat Springs,Co STOL airport in the Rocky Mountain Airways de Havilland Dash-7 was always an adventure too.

 

[Exhaustgases]

There has just been way too many strange plane crashes and disappearances in the not too distant past. The B17 is in there too.