Bombardier: Ground All Dash-8 Planes Worldwide!

This landing gear issue doesn't seem to be hurting business.

SAS said it stands by its maintenance program, while Bombardier defended the design and manufacturing of the Q400, introduced seven years ago, with SAS as the first customer. In total, Bombardier has more than 110 Q400s on order, including 22 new orders last week.
www.theglobeandmail.com...

The landing gear is manufactured by Goodyear, so I'm sure they're looking at the problem. Also, maintenance is sure to be looked at closely with increased inspections now that the cause seems to have been discovered.

Originally posted by Canada_EH
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?

If the customer base has lost confidence in the aircraft, they really have no choice from a commerical point of view.



Flybe (for example) haven't had these issues, so won't be subject to the same pressures.

Originally posted by Canada_EH
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?

Well - they were kinda forced into it by their customers, if they lose confidence in the plane, then it must go.


Anyway, I smell cheap CRJs...

"This decision should not be seen as a decision against Bombardier as a corporation," Mr. Ollongren said. "Bombardier has a number of excellent aircraft in their product line, but we do have a serious problem with the Q400. Our customers do not wish to fly the Q400."

edit: Damn... the board didn't show the previous post, so I assumed it was ate. Maybe some gremlins in the software?

[edit on 29/10/07 by kilcoo316]

Global News is reporting that all of these planes will be grounded in Europe.

It's just a news blurb on the TV right now but I'll see what they have to say about this on the 6:00 PM news about half an hour from now.

What several members have mentioned about public confidence in this aircraft is true. I know I wouldn't be going anywhere on one of these until they have a fix. I refused to board an MD-83 after the jackscrew incident and they refunded my ticket. It cost me a day to get another flight, but better than it costing me my life.

I have complete confidence in it still, and would fly on one any day. I stand by my belief that this is a QA issue, and a bad run of parts on a fairly limited number of planes. If this was the entire fleet they would be finding more than just the higher cycle planes having the problem.

The crash landing on Saturday was not caused by the same error as the previous crashes, investigators say. Sabotage? They are still investigating the cause...

Apparently, it was a passenger (who is a pilot himself) who notified the crew about the landing gear on the right side not being in position, before the crash landing in Copenhagen.


Saturday's crash landing in Copenhagen:

Compare it with...

...the crash in Aalborg Sept 9:

reply to post by Hellmutt


The actual evidence though that I posted in this thread already though points the a QA issue as Zaphod has said. Goodyear and Bombardier work round the clock the first time the fleet of SAS Q400's where ground so Goodyear is working their butts off too to figure it out.

The new orders early last week where from Qantas I believe.

Well found the info on the SK2867 from Bergen to Copenhagen. The info is as follows
Bombardier Q400 aircraft S/N 4024 registration number LN-RDI. Is there any way or does anyone else know the info for the other planes involved to see if they are all from about the same time in the production run. Just to flush out the claim of QA and bad parts.

edit: Q400 is a seven-year old example registered LN-RDK. Involved in the the main landing-gear collapse on touchdown at Aalborg.

[edit on 22/08/06 by Canada_EH]

Danish investigators have found a "sparepart" they didn't expect to find. Some part made of rubber was found in the defective landing gear in the Copenhagen plane. It didn't belong there and it may have blocked the landing gear.

Here it is, in english. It was a Q-ring, a circular elastic seal. Its source is unknown!


Q-400 malfunctions unrelated

This has to be sabotage! Obviously designed to make it look like the other accidents...

reply to post by Hellmutt

I guess some people would go as far as to say that Hellmutt but that is a worse case I can think of. The other is that since all aircraft where required to be serviced and checked over that posibly something was left behind (ie like sissors in a patient) and caused problems in this flight. I'll see what else I can find as well.

After reading the article it really strikes me as how unreasonable either their passengers are or their management. As far as I understand it their own personal did the check on the landing gear assemebly so it was their crew that dropped the o-ring in the assembly and caused the problem so in this case are they even admitting their own screw up here and continue to blame the Q400.

[edit on 22/08/06 by Canada_EH]

The RN for the one on Sept 09 was LN-RDK, S/N 4025. So that's at least two of them that were built next to each other on the line.

reply to post by Zaphod58


I think with that info Zaph something slipping through ie bad parts is likely. Something is wrong wrong with the jam nuts and its mad worse in the SAS enviorment

So as follows the info right now is

4035 was LN-RDS / delivered 2000-12-27 / crashed 12 Sept 07

4024 was LN-RDI / delivered 2000-09-23 / crashed 27 Oct 07

4025 was LN-RDK / delivered 2000-10-07 / crashed 09 Sept 07

Nippion Airways: 4084, 4082 & 4080
Japan Air Commuter: 4076, 4072 & 4073

[edit on 22/08/06 by Canada_EH]

LN-RDS was the bird from the incident in Vilnius on the 12th. It's MSN is 4035. So we're looking at planes within 10 of each other on the line. We need to look at all of them and see how close they all were to each other to see if there's a trend for those particular planes.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Above you can find the #'s for the airframes. Just to summerize here is the list of accidents so far minus the most resent.

13 March 2007
All Nippon Airways Flight 1603, a Dash 8 Q400 aircraft, bound from Osaka to Kochi, nose-landed safely at Kochi airport after the front wheel of the plane failed to deploy. None of the 53 passengers or 4 crew was injured. Bombardier advised all operators to inspect the nose landing-gear mechanism of the aircraft.

12 August 2007
A Dash 8 Q400 aircraft skidded off the runway at Gimhae International Airport in South Korea, injuring 6 people and damaging the aircraft, particularly the left propeller.

9 September 2007
The crew of Scandinavian Airlines flight 1209, en route from Copenhagen to Aalborg in Denmark, reported problems with the locking mechanism of the right side landing gear, and Aalborg Airport was prepared for an emergency landing. Shortly after touchdown the right wing gear collapsed and the airliner skidded off the runway while fragments of the right propeller shot through the cabin and the right engine caught fire. Of 69 passengers and four crew on board, 11 were sent to hospital, five with only minor injuries. About a month earlier the same airplane had had to return to Copenhagen 10 minutes after departure due to problems with the indicator lights of the landing gear.

12 September 2007
Scandinavian Airlines flight 2748 from Copenhagen to Palanga in Lithuania had a similar problem with the landing gear, forcing the plane to land in Vilnius. No passengers or crew were injured. Immediately after this incident SAS grounded all their 33 Dash-8/Q400 planes and, a few hours later, Bombardier recommended that all Dash-8/Q400s with more than 10,000 flights be grounded until further notice.

21 September 2007
An Augsburg Airways Dash 8 Q400 bound for Peretola Airport in Florence, Italy experienced a failure of the actuator mechanism on the front landing gear, preventing the gear from folding out. The pilots returned to Munich International Airport and performed an emergency landing. No passengers were harmed in the incident

I'm back online now (thank god, I was having withdrawls), so I can start digging deeper into this, and see what we can find out. I still stand by my theory based on what I've found so far, but it would be nice to have a little more confirmation.

SAS now says it has lost patience with the Q400 and has decided to dispose of its entire fleet, a touch embarrassingly for Bombardier.

I can't say that I blame them. Especially since it appears that the majority of the planes with the problem went to them.

reply to post by anxietydisorder


I think the landing gear is manufactured by Goodrich, not Goodyear