DC3 Still Flying at 70 | Hacker News Reader

DC3 Still Flying at 70

bbc.com

45 pointsjacquesm46 comments

The main device life limit for most commercial aircraft is pressurization cycles. The DC-3 is unpressurized, which means that the service lifetime of the airframes is limited mostly by accumulated damage and availability of parts.

You can view videos of a charter service, Buffalo Airways, maintaining and operating DC-3's here:

https://www.youtube.com/c/MikeyMcBryan/videos

They have their own DC-3 parts inventory. His father discusses buying truckloads of parts at auction back in the day in one video, which are worth 10x now.

>DC-3 is unpressurized

The dumbass in me is asking how one breathes safely flying an unpressurized aircraft? Or is it flying at much lower altitude?

The second. Ceiling is 23000 feet. That's pretty chilly and heady though, usually they fly much lower than that, above a certain height (8K night, 10K day) you'd have to wear an oxygen mask.

There are also companies that will recondition a DC-3 so thoroughly that from a regulatory perspective it is considered a zero-hour airframe.

Most applicable user name for a comment on HN, ever.

My partner and I were recently in Amazonian Colombia. One of the routes to a small indigenous community was serviced by a DC3. If you're not familiar with Amazonia, indigenous communities are poor communities of people usually growing a small area of traditional crops, keeping chickens, etc, and lead a life somewhere in between their traditional culture and modern western rural poor -- campesinos. Anyway, it was well known that one of the DC3s had crashed and killed everybody a few years ago on the same route, and even when we were there one had a landing mishap where it started to land on the earth strip but then aborted the landing and took off again. It was hard not to see it as a very poor community with no agency or financial influence, but who nevertheless depended on the flight, being forced to accept a terrifying old plane when they'd much rather have one of the modern models that service the same routes.

> even when we were there one had a landing mishap where it started to land on the earth strip but then aborted the landing and took off again.

I was in a Delta-operated B767 in the US that did a touch-and-go landing like this because we bounced hard. If the pilots try to push the nose down after a bounce, there’s a chance that they push it too far and the plane crashes. There’s an Air Disasters/Mayday episode about a particular incident of this and why it’s much safer to go around and try to land again instead of salvaging a potentially doomed landing attempt. It’s a weird feeling but far safer than the alternative.

I had a triple go-around the last time I flew, Lufthansa, into to Amsterdam, pretty heavy storm, last flight to land before the airport closed.

After the second time I had one of those 'what am I doing here?' feelings, even the pilot seemed super relieved to be on the ground.

OK, I definitely believe you that it's the right thing to do and that the pilot knew what they were doing (in your case and in the Colombian Amazon), but, my suggestion is that that sort of scare is more common with the very old DC3s. A guy I knew there, who had served in the Colombian army, was clearly pretty scared of having to take the DC3.

Robert Heinlein was rather fond of the old bird. Quoting "Glory Road":

"I feel the way about a Springfield that I do about a Gooney Bird; some pieces of machinery are ultimate perfection of their sort, the only possible improvement is a radical change in design."

"I knew it would fly; it was a Gooney Bird, a C-47, mostly patches and God knows how many millions of miles. It would get to Singapore on one engine if asked. I knew my luck was in as soon as I saw that grand old collection of masking tape and glue sitting on the field."

Sadly the Ju 52 will no longer fly because of the accident back in 2018 [1]. It has been flying since 1930 [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGF4ovuSrK0

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Ju_52

That is a fantastic presentation. Wish there were more summaries of accidents that are as informative and as concise.

If you're into podcasts at all, you might try checking out Black Box Down

I believe there are two or three still airworthy, as well as a few built under license in Spain as the Casa 352, and also perhaps one or two being restored to an airworthy state.

One, owned at the time by a German airline, toured the USA a few years ago after appearing at Oshkosh. The first I knew of it, I was working in my office when I heard the rumble of its engines. Looking up, I saw the silhouette of a three-engined airplane pass slowly by about a quarter mile away, and for some reason, I thought 'It looks like a pterodactyl!' At first, I guessed it was a Ford Trimotor, as I knew that, at least until fairly recently, one had still been in commercial service, flying a short hop between somewhere near Cleveland and an island in lake Erie.

The DC-3 is a rugged, durable, proven airframe that is especially well suited to harsh environments. It is straightforward and simple to maintain for a reasonably knowledgeable aviation mechanic and there are lots of spare parts, even today, because they were produced in such a massive quantity during the war. Probably only the Antonov An-2 [0] would rival or beat it in these areas.

When I was a kid growing up in Tennessee there was an organization called Remote Area Medical [1] that would fly in and set up temporary clinics in rural or otherwise hard-to-reach areas, especially in and around Appalachia. I would occasionally see their DC-3 [2] at the Knoxville airport. I just checked and it looks like they still use the DC-3.

If you go to an airshow there's almost guaranteed to be a DC-3 or C-47 (the military version of the DC-3) there and most museums have one because they are so ubiquitous.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-2

[1] https://www.ramusa.org/

[2] https://www.ramusa.org/ram-airborne/

66 were reborn as Basler BT-67s (re-engined with Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-67R turboprops).

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basler_BT-67

15 of those have had major accidents, which seems like a lot.

They are used for taking-off/landing from very bad terrain, like a gravel runway carved in mountainous forests, glaciers and other similar sketchy places where it's quite easy to fuck up.

The majority of the crashes happened because of a botched take-off/landing and surprisingly caused only a few deaths.

Also, half of the crashes seem to be attributable to the columbian air force or columbian police: In one instance several hand grenades where detonated accidentally inside the plane.

So all in all it doesn't seem like this plane had many accidents because it's dangerous, but because it's used to do dangerous things.

This good article needs a (2013) in the title.

You can see the tracking of the flight (last flown 11 months ago) here https://flightaware.com/live/flight/BFL168

If you fancy a ride in one and you're in, or don't mind a trip to, Finland see: https://www.dc-ry.fi/english/

They only run during the summer (when the nights are short). I flew from Helsinki to Mariehamn in the Aland islands on it and it was a wonderful experience.

This year they had to move from the local GA field that has been closed to the main international airport and it is a lot of fun being on it taxiing around the big commercial Airbuses.

Air Chathams has a DC3 in their fleet, there’s a great Allplane podcast episode (incl transcript) on some of the other old planes they fly and how their operation has evolved.

https://allplane.tv/podcast/2020/6/27/the-allplane-12-air-ch...

If you want to have a go at flying one virtually, there's a very nice free add on for x-plane (not free itself obviously): https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/40334-awxdc...

There was a DC-3 rescued from St-Hubert Airport near Montreal, it was just a shell when they started and it flew for D-Day memorial. Registration C-FDTD. You can read more about it here: https://planesavers.com/ and watch the videos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/MikeyMcBryan. Having this DC-3 being rebuilt in what is pratically my backyard, it was fascinating to see the progress and see it in person.

Those are such labors of love. Last year there was a big event here to remember the liberation and a number of these old warbirds flew right over our offices in Baarn. I can't really describe the kind of sound, but even with the windows closed it was like all hell broke loose. 10 of those radials at less than 500 meters high is very impressive.

I've visited the old hangar (Hangar 10, for the locals) on Schiphol Oost a couple of times when the PH-DDA (which had a horrible accident by the way) and another DC-3 were being worked on, the PH-DDA was still flying at the time and the other one was in a state of complete overhaul, painstaking part-by-part reconstruction. I'm not quite sure whatever happened to the second plane but the PH-DDA will return to Schiphol Oost soon so volunteers can continue to work on it. This is good because there is a lot of knowledge about those old planes floating around the old Schiphol airport, this is where Fokker (now bankrupt) had part of their assembly lines.

Some countries even still use it for military service, such as South Africa, which has a handful of examples re-engined with turboprop engines for maritime patrol use.

I've seen one of those in service in Europe too. It was owned by a geosurvey company. Really easy to see because the engine nacelles were totally different.

I don't think it was that basler 67 either. The nacelles looked more vertical.

Edit: I think it was this one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conroy_Turbo-Three

Yep. As far as I know all the current geosurvey ones are Basler conversions, but there are different engine options if I recall correctly.

e.g. https://www.bellgeo.com/aircraft and http://www.dc-3.co.za/dc-3-south-african-operators/spectrem-...

There are other conversions though. The South African ones were done by Braddick Air Services, based on a licence from Schafer/AMI in the US, so it's subtly different from the Basler BT-67s.

Ahh you're right!

It was actually one of those Bell Geo aircraft. I had forgotten the name of the company.

Those engines are actually on the wikipedia page, but the front view in this photo looks different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basler_BT-67#/media/File:Basle...

That must indeed be a different engine option.

Thanks for the clarification!

Fascinating frankenplane: https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/frankenplane-1...

"With no DC-3 wings to be found, maintenance crews repaired the damaged aircraft with a DC-2 wing, five feet shorter than the original."

And from my reading of that article it was only the right hand side wing that they replaced, not both sides so it was asymmetrical for the duration of that flight. What an amazing story, and what a great case for modular design.

There's DC association [1] (RY) in Finland that operates a DC-3 and you can book a flight on it if you are into that. I think they mostly fly during the summers, though.

[1] https://www.dc-ry.fi/english/

The doors feel so tiny. I wonder how much of that is engineering constraints vs that it was designed for a population that was shorter than we are. I had the same feeling visiting the HMS Belfast in London.

Were we really that much shorter? I know people were much shorter in the middle ages but it's only been a few generations since the war. I'd be surprised if we grew that quickly.

I think planes and ships were just a lot smaller then. A DC3 is like a regional airliner now. And modern construction would permit bigger doors.

I believe we were. If you look at the chart in the section "Increase of human height over two centuries" [1], we gained a good 10-15cm on average over the generation who fought ww2.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/human-height

Most of that is nutrition, not genetics.

Sure, but from the view of design that's irrelevant.

I interpreted the 'generations' as being a reference to genetics, rather than to nutrition, hence the comment.

Supposedly Eisenhower said that the three tools that the US Army could not have done without in North Africa were the C-47, the bulldozer, and the 5-ton truck.

There's a DC-3 near me that is/was being flown for short-hop cargo flights.

Unfortunately, some idiots decided to treat the plane like a jungle-gym one night, and ended up causing many thousands of dollars in damage to the plane...probably walking on parts of the wing they shouldn't, or something.

I haven't heard it pass over my house in quite some time, so I guess he never got it fixed up. I hope I'm wrong.

DC-3's burn leaded gasoline. Older piston aircraft like the DC-3 are why we can't simply ban leaded gasoline in aviation. There are just too many around in active use doing important things.

We can ban it for newer aircraft; or at least discourage it in the same way that happened with cars. That way, the market will do the rest and eventually it will be quite hard to find leaded fuel.

From an environmental point of view, a handful of historical planes still burning the stuff when they fly occasionally should not be a huge issue.

The DC3 is awesome. A few years ago, they flew a few C47s (the military version of the DC3) to Normandy that saw service in WW II. Amazing machines. Looks like a lot of fun to fly them as well.

>From an environmental point of view, a handful of historical planes still burning the stuff when they fly occasionally should not be a huge issue.

From a random forum[1]:

>Northern Air Cargo and Everets Air Freight (DC-3's, DC-4's, DC-6's etc.etc.) in Alaska burn two thirds of the 100LL produced in the United States.

... where 100LL is leaded gasoline. It is more or less the same here in Canada where almost all bush aviation runs on leaded gasoline. The remote communities served by such historical aircraft simply can not afford to do an instant upgrade of the fleet they depend on. They can't afford to do any upgrade really. It is well past time to start addressing the actual issues here.

[1] https://www.supercub.org/forum/showthread.php?23095-The-Futu...

Pretty tricky to do a technical fix for this, the problem is that the valve seats are not going to survive conversion to unleaded and re-manufacturing the individual heads or making inserts is going to be prohibitively expensive for those parties that still rely on the DC-3, which typically are not amongst the wealthiest entities. I wouldn't be surprised if enforcing this would cause more deaths than you'd ever save by using leaded gasoline for those planes. They're quite literally the lifeline for plenty of places.

Don't have to ban it, just tax it more and more each year.

The vast majority of general aviation aircraft fly with 1950s technology air-cooled engines that also require 100 octane "low-lead" gasoline as certified. That includes Cessnas built in the 2000s. It's not just old planes like the DC-3.

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