SAS cancels flights after grounding Q400 planes over new crash landing
28.10.07
Scandinavia's biggest airline, SAS, cancelled 57 flights today after grounding its fleet of Dash 8 Q400 turboprop planes for the second time in two months following a crash-landing of one of the aircraft in Copenhagen yesterday. The landing gear of an Q400 collapsed on landing at Copenhagen's Kastrup Airport on Saturday at 16:55 local time, but no one was seriously injured.
Scandinavian aviation authorities on Saturday issued a new flight ban on all SAS's Q400 turboprops shortly after the incident. SAS said in a statement it had cancelled 49 flights on Sunday and a further 8 flights on Monday.
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.'
The Q400 is designed for regional services and carries up to 78 passengers. The airline grounded its entire fleet of 27 Q400 planes, 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 hurt.
The collapse of the main landing gear in the September incidents has been attributed to corrosion. But official investigations by Lithuanian and Danish authorities have not yet been completed.
SAS restarted Q400 flights earlier this month after replacing part of the landing gear. 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 and whose operations have been affected by previous groundings include UK airline 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 fly the plane.
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