Airlink planes suspended after accidents

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The embattled state-owned Airlink has decided to permanently cancel a number of its routes reports had.

The routes between George and Bloemfontein, Port Elizabeth to East London, Port Elizabeth to Bloemfontein and Nelspruit to Livingstone, Zambia will be permanently scrapped.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) barred 13 of its Jetstream 41 planes from further service on December 23 last year, after two incidents earlier believed to have resulted from the same problem with a seal in the engines.

It has since become clear an incident in Durban was caused by a secondary human error.

The other incident at Nelspruit was caused by a lack of oil pressure.

The suspension of the planes has prompted Airlink to hire alternative aircraft.

Airlink spokespersons indicated that the events of the past three weeks have only forced them to speed up the process of rebuilding and revamping, which would otherwise have taken place only far into the future.

The first two of four additional Embraer 135 planes is due to depart from the US soon, while the other two will arrive in South Africa before the end of January 2010.

The CAA released one of the Jetstreams for service after an intensive investigation. The rest of the planes will probably be released quicker, since the same maintenance management system applies to them all.

There is still have a long way to go to restore passengers' faith in Airlink. however, The CAA give the assurance that they will not release a single plane if it isn't 100-percent safe.