To email me, click on the image and write the correct adress as given below
(replace -AT- by the @ symbol).
Sorry for the inconvenience, but this is because spam has increasingly become a problem.
The history of the swingtails goes back to the 1960s. This conversion was
an invention of the engineering department of the Belgian airline SABENA, after Air Congo had made a
request to Sabena to reconfigure a DC-4 so it could transport larger pieces
of freight and cars.
C-54B 9Q-CBG (cn10452) was picked for this and it lasted almost 6 months to
complete this project in Brussels. First flight was on dec. 16th, 1967.
The flighttest program lasted till march 1967 upon which it was delivered
to Air Congo. It was still active when Air Congo changed its name into Air
Zaire Oct.19th 1971. In July 1976 this DC-4 was sold to Zaire Aero Service which
kept it till Sept. 1984. At that time it was sold to Kinair Cargo and
received a new identity: 9Q-CBK. Unfortunately it crashed on August 23rd,
1988 at M'Bamon Island in the Zaire River near Kinshasa and was written
off.
The next customer was Kar Air of Finland, which had a fleet of 3 passenger DC-6Bs and
operated charters in and outside Europe. To be more flexibale with its
fleet Kar Air decided to reconfigure DC-6B OH-KDA (cn45202) to the Swingtal
variant. Thus they would be able to operate both in passenger configuration
as well as in cargo configuration.
Sabena had to rethink the idea as the DC-4 did not have a pressurized cabin
and the DC-6 did. On April 16th, 1968 Sabena completed the reconfiguration
and started flight testing. It was now capable of loading cargo with a length of 60 ft. (18 m.) and was
designated DC-6B ST.
After completion of the flighttesting, it was redelivered to Kar
Air and they operated it till Sept. 27th 1981. It was mostly used for cargo
charters on behalf of the United Nations and on relief flights for the
International Red Cross. Destinations were mostly found in Africa. On July
2nd, 1982 it was sold to Trans Air Link, who reregistered it as N876TA and
operated it on cargo flights from Miami into the Caribbean. In 1986 it was
sold to Northern Air Cargo, who used it till its crash on Sept.26th 2001 at Alpine, Alaska.
There was a 3rd and final reconfiguration and was carried out for Spantax.
The idea was the same, to be more flexable in utilisation of the fleet.
DC-6B EC-BBK (cn44434) was the victim and on April 30th, 1968 it made its
first flight after being converted to "swingtal DC-6". Spantax used it for
both pasenger- and cargo charters till July 1975 within Europe. It was sold
to Zantop and registered as N434TA on July 29th, 1975. Zantop used it to
transport car parts from Detroit-Willow Run, for the local motor industry.
But recession set in during the 1980s and Zantop stored the DC-6BF.
Northern Air Cargo came along and bought it July 1987. At the end of the
1990s, early 2000, the airframe reached the end of its structural life and
was stored at Fairbanks,AK.
Due to the loss of N867TA and the unique abilities of the
swingtail-concept, Northern Air Cargo decided to pay for a full check up
and restore N434TA to renewed airworthiness. This will take a lot of money
(more, in fact, than the airframe is worth, but the unique loading
facilities for cargo with lengthy dimensions make it worthwhile) and time,
but hopefully it will fly again in 2002.
Credit: Niels Borcharding / Editor Propliners Section, Scramble magazine
To email me, click on the image and write the correct adress as given below (replace -AT- by the @ symbol). Sorry for the inconvenience, but this is because spam has increasingly become a problem.
|