Lockheed Constellation L-049

The L-049 is the original Constellation. In mid-1939 Lockheed began work on the Excalibur 39A, the study that would formally become the L-049, and designed it from the outset around four Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone 18-cylinder twin-row radials. It was a bold choice: the engine had been on the market for two years, but its reliability under prolonged use was poor, and Lockheed considered four Pratt & Whitney R-2800s before sticking with its original proposal. The R-3350's tendency to catch fire in flight, still evident in 1943, would later shape the aircraft's career; postwar improvements such as direct injection into each cylinder and the Turbo-Compound system went mainly to models after the L-049.

The first military examples also carried the L-049 designation. When the Army took over production, the aircraft TWA had on the line became C-69 transports, and the L-049 family spent the war in olive drab. The wartime figures differ by source: the English-language Wikipedia counts 22 C-69s completed before the end of hostilities, seven of which were finished on the line as civil L-049s; the German-language compilation states that the large additional USAAF order was cut in spring 1945 to 73 aircraft, of which 22 had been accepted by May, and that the remaining 51 received a civil interior in the factory for 33 to 48 passengers, or up to 60 with tighter seating. According to the same source, civil certification came on 1 December 1945 and, apart from three examples, the military C-69s too were eventually sold to civil operators under the L-049 designation.

The German-language Wikipedia puts the run at 88 L-049s, 73 civil and 15 military, out of a total of 233 short-fuselage Constellations once the L-649 and L-749 are added. Its civil customers were, according to that compilation, TWA (27), Pan Am (20), American Overseas Airlines (7), KLM (6), BOAC (5), Air France (4), Línea Aeropostal Venezolana (2) and Panair do Brasil (2). The L-049 was therefore the Constellation of the great transatlantic carriers of the early postwar years: on both sides of the ocean, the airlines that wanted to cross the Atlantic in a pressurized cabin started with it before moving on to the longer-range L-749. Lockheed also prepared a variant with additional fuel tanks, the L-149, which was a modified L-049.

TWA received the first civil Constellation on 1 October 1945, but according to the German-language Wikipedia the first airline to put it into scheduled service was Pan American, on 3 February 1946, on the New York-Bermuda route. Three days later TWA opened its transatlantic service between New York and Paris. In Europe, Air France's first Constellation was an L-049, F-BAZA, delivered in June 1946.

The L-049's first major setback came that same summer. On 11 July 1946, TWA's L-049 NC86513, named Star of Lisbon, was on a training flight near Reading, Pennsylvania, when electrical wiring in the baggage compartment arced and set the aircraft on fire in flight. The smoke and the intensity of the fire made it impossible for the pilots to keep control; five of the six crew members were killed. The accident, remembered as TWA Flight 513, led to the grounding of all Constellations from 12 July to 23 August 1946, until cargo fire detection equipment could be fitted to all similar aircraft.

Another L-049 was involved in one of the most closely studied tragedies of the period. On 20 October 1948, KLM's PH-TEN Nijmegen, flying from Amsterdam to New York via Prestwick, crashed into high ground near the Scottish airport, killing all 40 people on board, 30 passengers and 10 crew. It was flown by Koene Dirk Parmentier, KLM's chief pilot and one of the winners of the MacRobertson Air Race. The weather at Prestwick had deteriorated without the crew knowing it and, while attempting to land on the alternative runway, the aircraft struck high-voltage power cables and then the ground. The court of enquiry pointed, among other factors, to the failure to inform the crew of the worsening weather and to KLM's approach charts, copied from wartime US military charts, which were riddled with errors and did not show the higher ground.

Several L-049s survive. The Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona, displays N90831, a former C-69 with serial number 42-94549 converted for civil service and one of the first TWA Constellations. The TAM Museum in São Carlos, Brazil, has N86533, painted in Panair do Brasil markings, which previously served as a children's attraction at the entrance of Silvio Pettirossi airport in Asunción. Air France's former F-BAZA, now N9412H, was sold in May 1976 to Frank Lembo Enterprises for use as a restaurant and lounge; it was flown to Greenwood Lake Airport, New Jersey, in July 1977, passed with the airport to the State of New Jersey in 2000, and since 2005 its interior has served as a flight school office. In Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, N2520B is on display in Aerosur livery, known as El Avión Pirata. And at the Science Museum's large-object store at Wroughton, near Swindon, sits N7777G, painted in TWA colours although it never flew for the airline: the Rolling Stones used it to carry their equipment on their 1973 Australian tour, and it is the only Constellation in the United Kingdom.