Bombardier: Ground All Dash-8 Planes Worldwide!

Canadian plane producer Bombardier recommends all Dash 8-400 planes to be grounded worldwide! There have been several accidents the past few weeks. There's a problem with the landing gear. A plane crashlanded in Denmark on Sunday. Last night a plane had to make an emergency landing in Vilnius, Lithuania. Four weeks ago there was also an incident in South Korea. And in Tokyo. Incidents everywhere with this plane every other day, it seems...


There's a video of the danish crash landing here. Nobody got hurt, but it was a miracle. There were 76 passengers, and they'd been moved from the middle of the plane before landing. They were moved because the pilot was worried about the possibillity of a propellor blade flying through the plane. And it did... It came flying through the plane, but nobody was sitting there... very wise move of the pilot. The plane started to burn but everybody got out of the plane safe.



Link for those who can read norwegian. There's a picture of the incident in South Korea four weeks ago.

Mod Edit: Title Changed At OP's Request.

[edit on 27/10/2007 by Mirthful Me]

That had to be pretty scary for those on board, what with a prop blade going through the cabin and then a fire. Those are some very lucky people to all walk away without injury.

Series 400

As of April 2007 a total of 140 Q400 aircraft are in airline service, with 215 firm orders. Major operators include: Air Nippon Network (9), Air Tahoma (6), Augsburg Airways (5), Austrian Arrows (10), Croatia Airlines (4 on order), Flybe (29), Horizon Air (33), Japan Air Commuter (8), Porter Airlines (4), Scandinavian Airlines System (24), Sunstate Airlines (QantasLink) (7), Jeju Air (5), Tassili Airlines (2, and 6 in order), Widerøe (4), Luxair (3), Royal Jordanian (2) ,and Colgan Air (15). Some 17 other airlines operate smaller numbers of Dash 8 Series 400.
en.wikipedia.org...

I wonder what this is going to cost Bombardier, or if it will effect the orders they have on the books ?


Edit: Correction

[edit on 12/9/2007 by anxietydisorder]

Originally posted by anxietydisorder

I wonder what this is going to cost Bombardier, or if it will effect the orders they have on the books ?

Good question. I guess it depends on how fast they can find a fix for the landing gear problem. It may effect future orders, I guess.

Yet another incident with a Dash-8 plane. It was bound for Copenhagen and had to return to Warsaw because of problems with the landing gear.


Nytt Dash 8-fly måtte snu (in norwegian...)


A couple of days ago, a Dash-8 had to abort a take-off from Berlin because of engine trouble. SAS has demanded a huge compensation from Bombardier for all the problems.

Yet another accident with a Dash-8. It crashlanded in Copenhagen Airport today.


Politiken.dk: SAS om flyulykke: Det ligner en ny type uheld (in danish...)


Aftenposten.no: Ny type ulykke (in norwegian...)




There's a video of today's incident here:
Politiken.tv (video)

An ugly trend...

Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- SAS AB, Scandinavia's biggest airline, grounded its fleet of Dash 8 Q400 aircraft for the second time in two months after a landing-gear problem forced a plane to crash-land at Copenhagen airport today.

The plane made an emergency landing at 4:55 p.m. local time, SAS said in a statement. Police said fire trucks covered the runway with foam before it touched down. The incident, which caused no deaths or serious injuries, came six weeks after two similar accidents prompted a temporary grounding of the aircraft.

SAS took its entire fleet of 27 Dash 8 Q400 turboprop planes out of service on Sept. 12 after landing gear failed to lock on two planes in four days, causing crash landings. The planes were phased back in between Oct. 4 and Oct. 14.

www.bloomberg.com...

I'm not sure why there would be a design flaw in something as fundamental as the landing gear and associated hydraulics.

I've done a fair amount of time in Bombardier aircraft, but I might pause at the prospect of flying in a Dash 8 for now.

I suspect that the problems are probably actuator related. If that's the case it could be a manufacturing/production issue. It looks like 23 of 25 SAS Dash-8s had corrosion damage to their landing gear. That tells me that something is seriously wrong along the way as they're being built.

From what I've found the locking nut on the actuator is backing off during operations. There's a wire that is supposed to lock it in place that is either braking or coming loose. When that locking nut backs off far enough the end of the arm of the actuator disconnects and the landing gear is unable to lock when it extends.

[edit on 10/27/2007 by Zaphod58]

Here's a YouTube video of the crash landing that started this thread. SK1209 landing at Aalborg airport.

Bombardier is now recommending airlines to continue to fly the Dash-8! They claim they are "still safe to fly", and nobody got seriously hurt so...


CTV.ca : Q400 aircraft still safe to fly, Bombardier says



SAS has been ordered by Scandinavian authorites to keep those planes grounded until further notice. I'm not flying one of those, that's for sure.

After the earlier undercarriage problems, all Dash-8s in Australia were grounded for inspection of the undercarriage, but were cleared to resume normal operations a few days later. This occurred about 2-3 weeks ago. Whether these new incidents will change that situation, I don't know.

The Australian grounding affected all Dash-8s not only the Q400.

The Winged Wombat

[edit on 28/10/07 by The Winged Wombat]

From what I'm finding it seems to be a limited number of Q400s. Several airlines inspected their aircraft and returned them to service. Some found one or two that needed repairs, and in the case of SAS, they found 25 of 27 that had the problem.

reply to post by Zaphod58

Would the number of aircraft at SAS suggest that it is a maintenance issue rather than a design issue?

You mentioned previously about a saftey wire on a locking nut. Saftey wire on aircraft is critical. It might have been something that should have been caught on a preflight inspection.

I would say that it's possible, except that it also happened to an ANA flight in Japan, and IIRC Japan Airlines also found at least one that it happened to as well. I suspect that SAS was just unlucky enough to have gotten most of a bad production run of parts. If all their birds came off the line at about the same time that would explain why it happened to them.

Bombardier is very disappointed with SAS decision to ground their Q400 planes, and urges other airlines to ignore all of this and continue to fly the plane. SAS have had three crashlandings within two months (!), all related to the landing gear in the plane's right wing. I guess people will have to die before they'll admit that something is wrong with that plane...


Bombardier 'disappointed' by SAS decision on Q400


If the plane is perfectly safe and nothing is wrong with it, could these incidents have been caused by sabotage? How can this keep happening again and again and again? I'd expect that they've checked the landing gear on these planes before they let them fly again. But it still happened again... :shk:

It depends on what the other airlines that operate the planes found. Other airlines were inspecting them at the same time, and from what I've found only SAS found a significant problem with their planes. There were a few others that found problems with a small number of planes, but it appears that they have a handle on the problem and have figured out what was going on with them.

reply to post by Hellmutt

SAS is in a operates in a tough enviorment and corrosion is a problem for their whole fleet. The Q400 landing gear has been gone over by BFG and im not saying they can't miss something but the SAS maitenaince has to be looked at and if something has been overlooked.

reply to post by Mirthful Me
I wouldn't worry about the Dash 8 the issues at this point are with only Q400's which are based off of the Dash 8 but has many upgrades and newer engineering then the 8's

reply to post by Zaphod58


Well it sounds like the SAS fleet has a higher cycle fleet of Q400's then the rest. So faitgue of some sort coupled with the climate could be to blame.

For those interested in an article thats a bit more reliable then a "news agency" check out flights articles on the subject. Here is just a bit of good insight on the subject.

Danish investigators identified corrosion of threads in the undercarriage actuator as the source of the problem, and SAS Group subsequently discovered similar corrosion on virtually all of its grounded turboprops

SAS Group has opted to change the main landing-gear actuator pistons and rod-ends on its entire fleet. Scandinavian Airlines vice-president for technical operations Geir Steiro stresses that the carrier has used only new parts during the refit.

www.flightglobal.com...

Last month, SAS Group grounded all 27 Q400s from the Scandinavian Airlines and Wideroe fleets following two landing accidents in which the right-hand main gear on two separate aircraft collapsed on touchdown. These incidents resulted in all high cycle Q400s being temporarily withdrawn.

www.flightglobal.com...

SAS are withdrawing the D8-Q400s from service:



SAS group

Following the recent period of events involving aircraft of the Dash 8 Q400 type, SAS’s management, following an unscheduled meeting of the Board of Directors held today, has decided to immediately discontinue services based on the use of this type of aircraft.



“Confidence in the Q400 has diminished considerably and our customers are becoming increasingly doubtful about flying in this type of aircraft. Accordingly, with the Board of Directors’ approval, I have decided to immediately remove Dash 8 Q400 aircraft from service,” says Mats Jansson, President and Chief Executive Officer of SAS.



In January 2000, SAS was the first customer to use the Dash 8 Q400 in its traffic operations. The aircraft have accounted for approximately 5 percent of the Group’s passengers. The aim is to replace traffic based on the Q400 by reallocating current aircraft in the SAS Group’s fleet and by means of leasing.

And Bombardier's response:

Bombardier

Bombardier is disappointed with the SAS decision to permanently discontinue flight operations with the Bombardier Q400 aircraft given that the landing incident is still under investigation by Danish authorities.

While SAS chose to ground its Q400 turboprop fleet following the incident on October 27, 2007, Bombardier’s assessment of this situation, in consultation with Transport Canada, did not identify a systemic landing gear issue. Based on this we advised all Q400 aircraft operators that they should continue with normal Q400 aircraft flight operations. Further, Bombardier and the landing gear manufacturer, Goodrich, have completed a full review of the Q400 turboprop landing gear system and results have confirmed its safe design and operational integrity.

Bombardier stands behind the Q400 aircraft. Since entering revenue service in February 2000, the Q400 turboprop has proven itself to be a safe and reliable aircraft with over 150 Q400 aircraft in operation among 22 operators around the world. To date, the fleet of Q400 aircraft has logged over one million flying hours and 1.2 million take-off and landing cycles.

[edit on 29/10/07 by kilcoo316]

Hopefully these accidents don't have a huge effect on the intire fleet. I can understand SAS's frustratio but they really seem to be on edge and over reacting a lil? no?