I wonder how surprised the people at Bombardier actually were this weekend that SAS decided to permanently ground its fleet of 27 Q400 turboprops after a third landing gear accident in a month. 
The decision was announced Sunday as confidence in the aircraft fell to the lowest point ever among SAS passengers according to company chief executive Mats Jansson.
A commercial aircraft grounding like this hasn’t occurred in decades (Petras Malukas/AFP/Getty Images) since the FAA grounded the McDonnell Douglas DC-10. But that, of course, was fleetwide. One DC-10 problem was design related, while another was eventually tracked back to an unorthodox maintenance procedure on the part of American Airlines.
So what in the world happened at SAS that has not occurred at Horizon here in the states, an airline that has successfully flown Q-400s for years? Notice that SAS did not call the aircraft unsafe.
From what I’ve been able to learn, Bombardier took great pains over the past month to review the Q400 gear after the last two accidents. Horizon, in fact, was so concerned, they too grounded their fleet while they checked the aircraft over and eventually gave the Q400 a clean bill of health.
Imagine for a minute the fallout if a major corporate operator – NetJets for example – suddenly decided to dump its fleet of Hawkers, or Citations or Gulfstreams because passengers had lost confidence in the airplane? What fallout would we see throughout the rest of worldwide business aviation if the CEO of IBM said he wouldn’t set foot on their Global Express ever again?
Reading between the lines of the news release battle between Bombardier and SAS, there is probably something else afoot beside the Q400 landing gear issue. Especially since SAS already asked Bombardier for U.S. $75 million in compensation for the heartache of their broken airplanes and their tarnished reputation, no small problem for an airline.
Could this same problem happen to a business airplane manufacturer? Certainly.
But I’m waiting for the dust to settle on this story to learn why SAS really grounded their airplanes. Luckily no one lost their life here.
My guess is we’re going to find that perhaps there was a difference of interpretation on maintenance procedures or some other customer service issue between the two organizations that led to this problem. Perhaps a problem that – had it been dealt with early on – could have prevented an embarrassing situation for these two companies.
No matter what anyone says to the contrary, good business evolves from good relationships that relate to integrity, honesty and good common sense. And those take work sometimes. No wait.
Good relationships take work ALL the time.
Technorati tags: airline pilots, SAS, Bombardier, business aviation, aviation+safety, business relationships, Q400