Andrew Doyle/MUNICH
SAS Commuter is working with Bombardier and Pratt & Whitney Canada to rectify reliability problems which have marred the entry-into-service of its Dash 8 Q400 turboprops.
The technical difficulties have forced the Scandinavian regional to keep one of four aircraft delivered so far on the ground for use as a back-up in an effort to maintain flight schedules in the Scandinavian domestic market.
The airline should have already received 11 of the 70-seaters, but earlier production and certification issues delayed deliveries by several months. The carrier, the Q400 launch customer, received the first aircraft in January.
SAS Commuter president Ole Pedersen accepts some responsibility for the service disruptions - admitting that the airline may have been "a bit too optimistic" with its Q400 scheduling plans - although "we have definitely had too many snags", he says.
"After the first four weeks with the first aircraft we thought we should stick to the original traffic programme," says Pedersen. "But when we started it all went wrong - our internal planning should have been better."
The biggest problem, according to Pedersen, is the high level of cockpit nuisance warnings being caused by bugs in the avionics software. Other issues have included faulty riveting in a chain that links the control column to the aileron cables, which led to the fleet being grounded for two days.
An engine defect allowed oil to leak into the low-pressure compressor, resulting in fumes entering the cockpit and passenger cabin through the bleed air system. This led to four engine changes having to be carried out within "a short time", says Pedersen.
Bombardier has been "extremely responsive", he adds, but a software upgrade to eliminate the false warnings is not expected to become available until September. An aggravating factor, he concedes, was the fact that "we started off with too few licensed technicians".
Pedersen declines to reveal the current despatch reliability rate, but admits that during a one-month period nearly 6% of Q400 flights had to be cancelled as a result of technical problems.
A group comprising Bombardier, P&WC and SAS is working on a recovery plan aimed at lifting despatch reliability to 98.7% by July.
Bombardier says: "There have been some problems, but none of them are major. It's the normal dip we get in reliability during the transition from test flying to scheduled service.
"There are fixes in place for all of the problems," it adds. "There won't be any more surprises."
On the issue of compensation Pedersen will say only that: "We are being taken care of." SAS Commuter expects to have received 13 Q400s by the end of this year, instead of the 20 originally scheduled. "Lack of reliability in the delivery schedules is really the number one concern and has really hit us hard," says Pedersen.
Source: Flight International
