Survivors
The CC-106 Yukons retired in March 1971 and were replaced by the Boeing 707 (CC-137). The Yukons might have served longer with the Canadian Forces Air Transport Command but for two factors: the need for an aircraft which could operate as an in-flight refueling tanker, and the chronic shortage and high cost of spares, the latter resulting because the CL-44 had never gone into large-scale production. All Yukons were sold to South American and African operators as they could not be registered in Northern America or Europe since the Britannia windshields did not meet new security standards. The CC-106 had the original Bristol Britannia windshield and, on its retirement from RCAF operations, the cost of conversion was estimated at $250,000.00 per unit, cost alone precluding its use in North America and Europe. In 1974, a special exclusion was granted for the CC-106 (Cargo) for civil operations in Canada.
In commercial operations, the CL-44 proved to be an extremely profitable aircraft to run with a fuel burn half that of a Boeing 707. The CL 44 burned 5,500 pounds of fuel (less when operating at its higher flight levels) per hour. This fuel consumption and its fuel tanks capacity (80,800 lb) gave 15 hours and longer in the air, cruising at an airspeed of 300 kts. It had a payload of 27 metric tons. After 40 years, out of the 39 aircraft built, 18 had either crashed or been destroyed in operation, 13 had been cut up, and two (including the Guppy) remain more or less operational. The remaining eight aircraft are parked around the world or have already been scrapped. Not a single CL-44 had been conserved or been prepared for a museum although the Ecuadorian Air Force salvaged #13 for eventual display at a new aviation museum in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The Guppy "Skymonster" CL 44 was flow by the CL 44 Association from the U.S.A. to Great Britain to be preserved. As of 2010, it remains complete at Bournemouth (Hurn) Airport, England.
Read more about this topic: Canadair CL-44
Famous quotes containing the word survivors:
“I want to celebrate these elms which have been spared by the plague, these survivors of a once flourishing tribe commemorated by all the Elm Streets in America. But to celebrate them is to be silent about the people who sit and sleep underneath them, the homeless poor who are hauled away by the city like trash, except it has no place to dump them. To speak of one thing is to suppress another.”
—Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)
“I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don’t know how to handle their parents. They see that their parents are traumatized: they scream and don’t react normally.”
—Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)