Safety concerns ground airline

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This article was published 01/02/2005 (7859 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Manitoba airline that serves the North through passenger and medevac flights has had its entire fleet of 25 planes grounded by Transport Canada due to safety concerns.

Transport Canada spokeswoman Kate Fletcher said Transport Canada inspectors conducting an audit last week of Skyward Aviation’s maintenance and operations procedures found some problems with the condition of a number of aircraft.

Transport Canada issued letters of notification to the company about the defects on Friday and ordered 13 planes out of the air.

The entire fleet was grounded yesterday, hours after the Free Press began making inquiries on the status of the airline.

Fletcher said there were specific defects on some of the planes, in addition to general concerns about training, aircraft maintenance and management systems.

In a statement released last night, Transport Canada said it had “taken this action in the interest of public safety because the Department identified safety deficiencies during an audit of the company. Today’s suspension does not preclude any further regulatory action at a later date.”

Skyward is prohibited from any service until it shows the deficiencies have been corrected, Fletcher said.

She said as far she was aware, Skyward had a good record previously.

“This is something we don’t do lightly,” she said. “It is a significant step, but during the course of the audit, we identified issues and sometimes there comes a point when a decision has to be made that requires immediate action and that’s what we did in this case.”

A call to Skyward Aviation president Frank Behrendt was not returned yesterday.

A spokesman for the province couldn’t be reached last night to determine if alternative medevac services have been arranged.

Skyward Aviation conducts regularly scheduled flights between Winnipeg, Thompson and a number of small, aboriginal communities in the North and in Nunavut.

The company also provides a charter service and maintains six air ambulances, making it the largest medevac service provider in the province.

Planes from other small airlines were pressed into service over the weekend to cover Skyward’s flights.

Fletcher did not say when the planes might be back in service.

Thompson-based Skyward Aviation has been in business in Manitoba since 1987.

The company has 260 employees located in Winnipeg and Thompson and at Manitoba stations in Norway House, Cross Lake and Garden Hill, as well as Rankin Inlet, Nunavut.

Last year, Transport Canada also grounded another small Manitoba airline due to safety concerns.

Keystone Air Services was grounded for two weeks in February 2004 after inspectors found problems with the company’s maintenance procedures and documentation.

leah.janzen@freepress.mb.ca