Airlink problems have ‘minimal’ effect on cargo arm

The grounding of the 14
Jetstream 41 aircraft of SA
Airlink’s 41-strong fleet has
had only a minimal effect on
cargo movement, according
to Alwyn Rautenbach, MD of
Airlink Cargo.
“For us, there was very little
impact,” he told FTW. “The
J41 is a small aircraft with
only a small cargo-carrying
capacity.
“Anyway, the airline has
replaced these missing aircraft
with larger planes, although
the schedule frequency has
been reduced.”
The suspension of the
airworthiness certificates of
the 14 aircraft by the SA Civil
Aviation Authority (SACAA)
at midnight on Wednesday
December 20 came after
four Airlink planes had been
involved in incidents since
September 2009, and the
airworthiness of the fleet
could not be guaranteed.
The SACAA inspection of
the first four airplanes has
started – and FTW is led to
believe that the certificates of
these airplanes could soon
be reinstated.
The suspension was
triggered by an incident on
December 20 when smoke
was seen coming from one of
the engines of an Airlink J41
that was set to take off from
Nelspruit. The oil pressure
was also low.
According to the SACAA,
the problems were similar to
those experienced by the plane
that went down in Durban in
September – an incident in
which the pilot eventually died
in hospital, with the two other
crew members and a bystander
on the ground also injured.
The reason for the Durban
accident, said the SACAA
accident report, was because
“the engine had suffered a
catastrophic failure due to a
fatigue failure of the second
stage rotating air seal”.
The problem is that this
failure in these Honeywell
engines is not new.
The SACAA told FTW that
“this kind of failure appears
to be the 13th known similar
cause of failure of this type of
engine”.
Meantime, the result of the
report findings in the Durban
incident saw the SACAA
making the following interim
safety recommendation to
the US Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA).
“The FAA should require
Honeywell Aerospace to
expedite efforts to produce
an engineering solution
to the problem of second
stage turbine rotating air
seal failures on Honeywell
TPE331-14G/H engines,”
said the authority.