The curious story of the plane between El Berriel and Bahía Feliz

When you leave the south of Gran Canaria coming from English beach There is an old plane that tourists, who 64% repeat their stay on the island, love to see as a tribute to the passage of time in the destination. The Douglas Aircraft Corporation, DC-7, is 34,58 meters long and has a wingspan of 38,86 meters. The record distance that the plane flew non-stop was 6.450 kilometers.

It's the plane in The Berriel y Happy Bay from the old GC-500. It was not a Binter Canarias device as it is currently painted to the point that tobacco companies came to use it as a support. Swissair set it up with 75 passengers and Spantax set it up with 102 passengers. According to Juan Carlos Díaz Lorenzo in Puente de Mando "this aircraft is the last Douglas DC-7C Seven Seas built" and that "at the time it was the most advanced four-engine passenger aircraft in the North American aeronautical industry, powered by four powerful Pratt piston engines. & Whitney R-3350 Turbo Compund, came into competition late with the legendary Lockheed Super Constellation L-1049-G and preceded the first De Havilland Comet, Douglas DC-8, Boeing B-707 and Convair CV 880 and CV 990 jets." .

Who also knows the history of the plane well is the tourist intermediary Martín Smolen. The plane belonged to Swissair but on Three Kings Day 1962 it was transferred to Scandinavian Airlines Service (SAS), which gave it its first name: Erik Viking. SAS sold the device to Japan Air Lines to make flights between Tokyo and San Francisco and Los Angeles with a stopover in Honolulu. And so, remembers Martín Smolen, the Japanese airline had it until 1965. 

Smolen details that in 1965 he acquired the Spantax device to transport tourists over longer distances without stopping. He connected African and Middle Eastern destinations until December 1976. In 1978 he was retired and in 1979 Spantax donated it to the Real Aero Club of Gran Canaria. "From Gando to The Berriel Finally, it was carried out by sea, using floats, which were placed under the cabin and the wings," recalls Martín Smolen. In 2015, given the pain it generated, Binter made it an advertising medium in an attempt to make it not look like a mass of scrap metal. in view of tourism.