West Wind grounding hints at 'glaring' safety issues: aviation experts

Transport Canada's swift grounding of all flights from the company whose plane crashed in remote Fond-du-Lac, Sask.,is a rarestepaccording to several Canadian aviation experts, andthe move could indicate a "glaring discrepancy" in the company's safety procedures.

On Friday, the federal airline regulator suspended the air operator certificate of Saskatoon-based West Wind Aviation.

The move came nine days after a 44-seat West Wind ATR turboprop plane, carrying 22 passengers and three crew members, crashed about 1.5 kilometreswest of the Fond-du-Lac runway shortly after takeoff.

No one died in the crash, though six passengers and one of the pilots were seriously injured.

• Remarkable there were no fatalities in Fond-du-Lac crash

• Transport Canada suspends West Wind flights

Loss of certificatea'rare thing'

Transport Canada's inspection of an airline following a plane crash is routine. But its suspension of thecompany's certificate is not. The regulator said in its announcement that it grounded the airline because of "deficiencies in the company's operational control system."

Operational control systems tracka number of things, including:

• A plane's maintenance history.
• The weight of a plane's luggage and cargo and how that weight is distributed throughout the plane.
• Communication between pilots, dispatchers and other on-the-ground airline employees.
• The field experience of the pilots and how many hours they worked before aflight that crashed.

"It's a rare thing" to suspend a certificate, said John McKenna, president of the Air Transport Association of Canada in an interview with CBC News.

Greg McConnell, a former veteran Transport Canada inspector for25 years, estimatedthe regulator suspends fewer than 12 certificates a year, and does not do so lightly.

"The fact that Transportation Canadahas taken action so quickly shows there was obviously a glaring discrepancy," said McConnell."It's generally because there's not one little thing but a bunch of things that have completely gone awry."

Jock Williams,a retired Royal Canadian Air Force pilot and aviation expert,did not see Transport Canada's move as necessarily punitive,however.

"Nothing has been proven," he said, adding that it's unclear whether the deficiencieswere accidental or made knowingly.

Whittling down the causes

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) isan independent government bodythatinvestigates accidents and makes safety recommendations regardingaviation, rail, marine and pipelines. It's investigating the cause of the Dec. 13 crash.

The TSB has already ruled out engine failure, saying both engines were running until the turboprop hit the ground.

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"When an aircraft only flies a mile after takeoff, there are only three or four possible explanations and none of them are particularly good," said Williams.

"One immediately thinks about frost or ice on the wings. They think of an aircraft overload, fuel contamination."

Length of suspensionunknown

How long West Wind'ssuspension lasts depends on how quickly the company responds to and fixes the "deficiencies" flagged by Transport Canada.

"The suspension could be indefinite or it could be over in a matter of a few hours," said Williams.

With no income coming to the company, "their motivation is going to be to take action to get that suspension terminated," Williamsadded.

On Saturday, West Wind's bookings page was directing customers to the website of its codeshare partner Transwest Air.

Prior incidents

West Wind said in a release Friday that it had already voluntarily grounded all of its flying operations before Transport Canada ordered it to.

It's not the first time the company clipped its own wings.

In September 2016, the company temporarilygrounded its fleet because of what it called"potential administrative discrepancies" in its training records.

In early 2015, the TSB investigated an incident of smoke in the cabin of the same West Wind turboprop that crashedin Fond-du-Lac. Investigators found that the smoke came from "counterfeit or unapproved" light bulbs installed on the plane.

"West Wind Aviation has been in existence since 1983 and until nowhas never had an accident involving a serious injury," the company said in a Saturday release.

Inspections have been reduced

McConnell, the former inspector, said Friday'ssuspension of West Wind "should be a lesson" to his former employer, Transport Canada. He saidthe regulatorhas gradually reduced the number of inspections it does of airlines.

"We used to visit every operator on an annual basis. That no longer happens," he said.

"That yearly requirement then went to a three-year requirement, then to a five-year requirement. Now operational visits are generally reactive after something bad happens."

Neither West Wind Aviation nor Transport Canada responded to questions on Saturday.

The company said in a news release that it will workwith Transport Canada to review its procedures and processes "to enhance the safety of our passengers and crews."

Athabasca Basin Development, a group of seven Northern Saskatchewan communities that owns 65 per cent of West Wind, declined to comment.