My stepfather tells a story of being invited into the cockpit of a 990 during a cruise across the country. He was a pilot and back then, such things were commonplace. He says the thing was doing a solid Mach 1 with passengers on board. Can anyone else substantiate such a claim from personal experience? Thank you.

--thomash520 @ earthlinknet

The Convair 990 was known for it's speed. Extremely fast. To this day probably the only airliner that could beat it would be the SST.

--Clark

Back in the early Super70s I recall flying on an American Airlines 990 from Cincinnati (CVG) to Kennedy (JFK). What was memorable, besides the flight attendants (they were called stewardesses back then) being beautiful, was that the trip took exactly 45 minutes. As the distance from CVG to JFK was 580 statute miles, we were bombing along at a ground speed of 773 mph. It was by far, my fastest time ever on this route.

--tvspotman