News Details

Dana cancels flights over aircraft shortage

  • Non-schedule maintenance, bad weather reason for cancellations-Source
  • Carrier apologises to customers 

 

The dearth of airplanes has led to the cancellation, albeit temporarily of Dana Airlines flights. Although nobody knows when the suspension of flights would last, there are indications that it could last for days depending on when the airline’s planes that had been ferried for checks would return.

While some adduced the shortage of Dana airplanes for the epileptic services it is providing, the airline in its flight update apologized to its passengers for the cancellation of, “some of our flights due to operational reasons”.

“We are making efforts to re-protect passengers on other airlines while other passengers will be rescheduled to their preferred future flights”.

A visit to the airline’s counters at the Murtala Muhammed Airport 2 (MMA2) had nobody in sight. The ticketing counters of the airline were deserted.

An MMA2 official told Aviation Metric simply that the carrier had not been flying for more than two days.

A source close to the airline who pleaded anonymity said the airline’s five aircraft were down with one serviceable airplane; a requirement not sufficient to make them operate in line with Nigerian Civil Aviation regulations.

A top official of the carrier who pleaded anonymity attributed the problem to weather and non-scheduled maintenance as reasons for the problem.

“Weather and non-scheduled maintenance are the reasons some of our flights were cancelled. Yesterday, we did only Abuja and back three times and cancelled the rest”.

The harmattan haze blowing across the country has led to cancellation of flights by airlines but the case of Dana is said to have been made worse by insufficient airplanes.

An investigation by our reporter shows that many of the airline’s airplanes are due for maintenance making them not available to passengers that had already booked their flights with the carrier.

The aircraft’s B737-3H4 (Wet leased) with registration number 5N-DNA had been ferried overseas for heavy checks otherwise known as C and D-checks. The B737 aircraft is presently at 7 Star Hangar as engineers attend to the aircraft.

It is an extensive check of individual systems and components for serviceability and function. It requires a thorough visual inspection of specified areas, components, and systems as well as operational or functional checks.

It is a high-level check that involves extensive tooling, test equipment, and special skill levels. ‘C’ checks remove the airplane from the revenue schedule for 3 to 5 days. The ‘C’ check includes the lower checks, i.e. ‘A,’ ‘B,’ and Daily checks.

Information available to our reporter shows that the airline is working seriously to put back one of the MD-83s with registration number 5N-DEV.

The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) had on July 20, 2022, suspended Dana Airlines’ air transport licence (ATL) and air operator certificate (AOC) for safety-related issues.

The authority suspended the operating licenses after “discovering that the airline is no longer in a position to meet its financial obligations and to conduct safe flight operations”.

A few weeks after that, the carrier returned to the sky after undergoing a comprehensive audit supervised by the aviation regulatory body.


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