Keystone Air grounded after an audit into its operating procedures

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This article was published 10/11/2015 (3598 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Keystone Air Service, whose aircraft have been involved in four crashes in the last 15 years, has been grounded for the third time since 2002.

The Oct. 9 suspension by Transport Canada prohibits the charter airline from providing any commercial air service. Keystone cannot resume commercial air service “until it demonstrates to Transport Canada that it is in full compliance with aviation safety regulations,” said Transport Canada spokesman Sean Best.

Best called the suspension “severe action that the department only takes when we identify serious safety deficiencies and must act to protect the public’s safety.”

The most recent grounding was the third grounding for the small airline since 2002.

The troubled airline’s operating certificate was yanked after Transport Canada conducted an audit of its operating procedures.

The audit followed the crash of a Keystone plane outside Thompson on Sept. 15.

The Transportation Safety Board said the twin-engine piston aircraft, a Piper PA31, was mistakenly refilled with jet-engine turbine fuel in Thompson instead of the required aviation gasoline, called AvGas.

The plane with two pilots and six passengers aboard crashed into some trees 1.8 kilometres short of a runway. All eight passengers were sent to Thompson Hospital, none with life-threatening injuries.

Transport Canada conducted a post-accident inspection following the September crash, focusing on Keystone’s operational control and quality assurance systems. The federal agency wanted to ensure the company’s day-to-day actions were compliant with safety requirements for things such as pilot training and the dispatching of staff and aircraft.

“An effective quality assurance program ensures that regular and required maintenance on company aircraft is scheduled. It also ensures the non-compliant and unsafe aircraft stay on the ground,” Transport Canada said.

Phone messages to Keystone president Cliff Arlt were not returned. Keystone Air began in 1985 after Arlt, a pilot for Gabrielle Air, purchased Gabrielle’s assets.

Keystone does not fly scheduled flights. It is a charter airline of eight small planes that flies out of St. Andrews Airport.

It has had a numerous serious crashes, including the small aircraft that crash-landed at McPhillips Street and Logan Avenue in June 2002. Keystone’s first suspension followed that incident.

Keystone was grounded again in 2004 “based on significant safety concerns with the company’s maintenance management system identified during recent Transport Canada inspections of the company,” Transport Canada reported on its website. The suspension lasted from Feb. 5 to 23, 2004.

In 2012, four people were killed in a Keystone crash on North Spirit Lake, Ont.

The plane burst into flames after the crash, killing the pilot and three passengers, but one of the passengers survived.

In November 2000, a Piper PA-31 crash landed into the Assiniboine Forest in Winnipeg when water in the fuel tank froze and caused the right engine to conk out as the aircraft approached the Winnipeg airport. Two of the eight occupants were injured, but the Transportation Safety Board later said it could have been worse if not for the actions of the pilot.

The last airline to close in Manitoba following a suspension was Thompson-based Skyward Aviation in 2005. The northern air service had a fleet of 25 planes, and 260 employees.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca

— with files from The Canadian Press