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. [Read more…] about Bombardier Q400 Grounding: Could it Happen to Business Aviation?