SAS Q400s Grounded…Again

Only weeks after previously grounding its fleet of Bombardier Dash-8 Q400 aircraft to check for undercarriage faults, Scandinavian airline SAS has once again grounded its entire Q400 fleet after another undercarriage-related crash landing.

Fortunately, in this latest incident, no one was injured when the aircraft’s undercarriage collapsed upon landing at Copenhagen on October 27.

Prior to this latest occurrence, SAS had already stated its intention claim at least 500 million Swedish kronor (US$78 million) from the Q400’s manufacturer, Bombardier Inc., in compensation for lost revenue and damage to its reputation.

After the previous grounding, the last of SAS’s 27-strong fleet of Q400s had only returned to service on October 14 following safety inspections.

SAS officials have not confirmed the cause of the latest undercarriage-related incident, which might not necessarily be related to the faults that caused the previous groundings and have stated that it is up to the Accident Investigation Board to present any conclusions. Bombardier has issued a statement in which it states, “there appears to be no relationship between this incident and previous SAS Q400 main landing gear incidents.”

Bombardier has sent a product safety team to Copenhagen to assist Scandinavian aviation authorities in their investigation.

As a result of the September incidents, Bombardier instigated checks on all Q400 aircraft in service worldwide. The checks involved visual inspections of all 165 Q400s; any that had accumulated more than 10,000 takeoff and landing cycles were grounded until they had been inspected.

Furthermore, Transport Canada (Bombardier is a Canadian company) also called for detailed checks of all Q400s after 8,000 landings, or four years in service, whichever was the earliest.