Convair CV-240 family
Twin-engine short range airliner, 1947
The Convair CV-240 is an American airliner that Convair manufactured from 1947 to 1954, initially as a possible replacement for the ubiquitous Douglas DC-3. Featuring a more modern design with cabin pressurization, the low-wing, primarily piston-driven 240 series made some inroads as a commercial airliner, spawning nearly a dozen civil variants, and five for the military, including turboprop versions for both. Though reduced in numbers by attrition, various forms of the "Convairliners" continue to fly in the 21st century.
Design and development
The design began with a requirement by American Airlines for an airliner to replace its Douglas DC-3s. Convair's original design, the unpressurised Model 110, was a twin-engine, low-wing monoplane of all-metal construction, with 30 seats. It was powered by Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp radial engines. It had a tricycle landing gear, and a ventral airstair for passenger boarding. The prototype Model 110, registration NX90653, first flew on July 8, 1946. By this time, American Airlines had changed the requirements to include pressurization and deemed the design too small. Convair used the first prototype for 240 series development work before it had the plane broken up in 1947.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Convair CV-240 family” is twin-engine short range airliner, 1947. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Convair, CV-240 and family, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q868965. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1954 and 1946.
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This entry incorporates text from “Convair CV-240 family” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.