SAS grounds Q400 planes again after another crash landing
29.10.07
Scandinavia's largest airline, SAS, has cancelled 57 flights after grounding its entire fleet of Dash 8 Q400 turboprop planes for the second time in two months following a crash-landing in Copenhagen yesterday. The landing gear of an Q400 collapsed on landing at Copenhagen's Kastrup Airport on Saturday at 16:55 local time.
No one was seriously injured in the incident, but Scandinavian aviation authorities immediately issued a new flight ban on all SAS's Q400 turboprops. This lead to SAS cancelling 49 flights today and a further 8 flights for tomorrow (Monday).
The Q400 is designed for regional flights and carries up to 78 passengers. The airline grounded its entire fleet of 27 Q400's, built by Canada's Bombardier, last month after two crash landings in September, one in Vilnius, Lithuania and one in Aalborg, Denmark. Both incidents involved problems with the planes' landing gear, and in both no one was seriously injured.
The September incidents has been attributed to corrosion. Jens Langergaard, an SAS spokesman based in Copenhagen, said: 'The cause of yesterday's incident may well be another type of fault. There are many things suggesting it is.'
SAS restarted Q400 flights earlier this month after replacing part of the landing gear on all of its planes. It has asked for over $75m in compensation from Bombardier to cover the losses and damage to its reputation from this first incident, and this is likely to grow now.
A spokesman for Bombardier said: 'There is no move to ground any other of the fleet in operation or to recommend that. We have sent our product safety team to Copenhagen to work and support the investigation with aviation authorities.'
Other airlines that fly Q400s include Flybe, which has 35 of the planes, and Horizon Air, a regional unit of Seattle-based Alaska Air, which has 33 Q400s. Japan Airlines, Austrian Airlines and Augsburg Airways of Germany also use the plane.
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