European air safety regulator could ground Q400 planes
30.10.07
Europe's air safety regulator expressed concern yesterday after the latest crash landing of an SAS Dash-8 Q400 turboprop plane - the third in less than two months involving the same type of aircraft. As reported on Sunday, SAS has withdrawn the twin-engined plane made by Bombardier Aerospace of Canada from its fleet permanently as a result of the incident.
Daniel Höltgen, spokesman for the European Aviation Safety Agency said: 'We are very concerned about this recent accident and the possible relation with other accidents involving the same plane.' He said that the agency had requested an urgent meeting with Bombardier and Canadian transportation safety officials to discuss the possibility of a new grounding order.
Mr. Höltgen said that any European decision affecting the plane's authorisation would be made in close coordination with Transport Canada, the regulator that certifies Bombardier aircraft. He said: 'We do not want to do anything unilaterally.'
SAS announced on Sunday that it would permanently discontinue use of its 27 Q400 planes, after one of its flights from Bergen, Norway, with 44 people on board, crash landed in at Copenhagen Airport on Saturday. The plane's main landing gear had failed to extend. No one was injured in the accident, which followed two in September where the airline's Q400s left runways in Aalborg, Denmark and Vilnius, Lithuania because of a landing gear failure.
Investigations last month by the Danish and Lithuanian authorities concluded that the two earlier Q400 accidents had been the result of corrosion of a specific landing gear component. Hans Ollongren, a spokesman for SAS, said that the incident Saturday did not appear to be related to the previous two.
Twenty-six airlines operate the 78-seat Q400, which entered commercial service in 2000 and is used for short haul, regional flights. The SAS Q400 fleet is the second-largest in Europe after the Exeter based low-cost airline Flybe, which operates 33. A spokesman for Flybe said it has 'complete confidence' in its planes.
The spokesman said: 'We have no direct comment to make on SAS's decision [to stop using the planes]. Since entering service in February 2000, the Q400 has proven itself as a reliable and safe aircraft, with more than 20 global operators and 1.2 million takeoff and landing cycles.'
'Flybe awaits with interest the publication of independent reports into the SAS short-haul fleet and looks forward to learning of any issues with operating procedures with the aircraft or with SAS's maintenance procedures.'
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