Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 831

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Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 831
Summary
Date 1963-11-29
Type Not known Fatalities=118
Site {{{site}}}
Passengers 111
Crew 7
Injuries 0
Survivors 0
Aircraft type Douglas DC-8
Operator Trans-Canada Airlines
Tail number CF-TJN

Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 831 was a flight from Montreal/Dorval Airport (now Montréal/Trudeau) to Toronto International Airport (now Toronto/Pearson) on November 29, 1963. The aircraft was a Douglas Commercial DC-8-54CF, registered CF-TJN. Several minutes after takeoff in poor weather, the plane crashed near Ste-Thérèse-de-Blainville, Quebec, Canada, killing all 118 people on board: 111 passengers and 7 crew members.[1]

The crash created a large crater, and the plane was too badly damaged to determine a definite cause. The official report released in 1965 pointed to problems in the jet's pitch-trim system (the system used to regulate longitudinal positions) as a possibility, since a pitch trim problem caused a similar crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 304, another DC-8, a few months afterwards in 1964.

Trans-Canada Airlines (predecessor to Air Canada) created a memorial garden near the site of the crash.

This aircraft had 7 degrees of nose down trim set because of heavy rear baggage. The maximum allowable ND trim was later set officially at 2 degrees. The problem arose in the event of pitch trim compensator failure with high nose down trim - the pilots had to reset the trim tabs on the elevator before the aircraft could recover. The pitch trim compensator is the system presetting control column loading to correct for center of lift change as airspeed increases. The writer was one of 13 who were in a delayed bus from downtown Montreal which arrived 3 minutes late for the flight.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ SOS! Canadian Disasters, a virtual museum exhibition at Library and Archives Canada

[edit] References

[edit] External links


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