::: AIR CANADA’S WORST CRASH: Flight 621, DC-8 Radome Artifact ..::..

IT'S STILL HARD to believe, what one can find…even now.

With Apple iPhone 3GS in hand I find a nosepiece of Air Canada's "Stretch" DC-8, CF-TIW that was lost on July 5, 1970. A part of the radome, specifically. I photo capture the GPS co-ordinates. At almost 9 pm at night. July 2, 2010, almost 40 years after the crash.

FLIGHT 621 has remained AIR CANADA'S WORST aviation accident with 109 lives lost in Castlemore, Ontario. Seven years previous, TCA lost 118 people, in St. Therese du Blainville, Quebec.

But that was Trans-Canada-Air-Lines…not Air Canada.

What's a RADOME??

The RADOME is usually found on the nosecone of any aircraft.

FLIGHT 621's Air Canada DC-8, numbered internally 878, it's radome housed the jet airliner's radar antenna and thus protected the aircraft's sensitive radar from the elements, both at 40 below and at 600 mph. The spherical covering also reduces drag so that DC-8 is more aerodynamically streamlined as she hopscotches across the continent.


By the numbers…

1) GPS co-ordinates of the actual radome find.

2) Thin, crushed, painted black metal of 878's radome. Remember, only a very small section of the Air Canada's DC-8 livery was painted semi-gloss black. The upper nose portion, as pictured. The fuselage aluminum just up from the nosecone, or radome area, is about double the thickness of the radome aluminum and is tempered to a harder standard.

3) ORIGIN AREA of the radome artifact, its actual area of location…as highlighted on an Air Canada DC-8.