The Convair 990 Coronado is an American narrow-body four-engined jet airliner produced between 1961 and 1963 by the Convair division of American company General Dynamics. It was a stretched version of its earlier Convair 880 produced in response to a request from American Airlines.
The 990 was lengthened by 10 ft, which increased the number of passengers from between 88 and 110 in the 880 to between 96 and 121. Watch the video from Mustard:
This was still fewer passengers than the contemporary Boeing 707 (110 to 189) or Douglas DC-8 (105 to 173), although the 990 was 25–35 mph faster than either in cruise.
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Before Concorde defined what it meant to fly fast, there was another airliner that tried to push the speed of air travel. With outside the box engineering, the Convair 990A cruised faster than any airliner before it. The Convair 990A is still the fastest non-supersonic commercial transport to have ever been produced./Mustard
