Arkhangelsk based air company Nordavia says its safety is not being compromised by continuing to operate the old An-24 propeller on the route to Tromsø in northern Norway.
Following BarentsObserver’s article last week on safety concerns with the An-24 aircrafts operated by Nordavia, the company today issued a press-release rejecting all claims.
“Speculations and talk about alleged non-compliance to safety requirements with the aircraft An-24 operated by Nordavia is groundless,” the company says. From January 2012, all such aircrafts must be equipped with the ground proximity warning system (GPWS) following demands from Russian aviation authorities.
GPWS is a system designed to alert pilots if their aircraft is in immediate danger of flying into the ground or an obstacle.
Such system is in place on the two An-24 aircrafts currently operated by Nordavia, the company says.
The safety claims regarding the An-24 aircrafts were however not related to the lack of GPWS. Norwegian aviation authorities enforced the use of GPWS on the cross-border flights from Russia more than ten years ago in accordance with European aviation requirements. As BarentsObserver reported last summer, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said that the An-24 should be subject to the same measures as another Soviet airliner, the TU-134, which Medeveded ordered to be withdrawn by January 1st, 2012.
The statement from the President came after several serious accidents with the old propeller in recent years. The first flight with an An-24 was back in 1959.
Nordavia operates the route Arkhangelsk-Murmansk-Tromsø with the aircraft three times a week. The plane is also on the route Arkhangelsk-Helsinki.
Nordavia says in their press-release that the first replacement of An-24 will come in February on the route Arkhangelsk to Narjan-Mar. The replacement will be the more comfortable 48 seats ATR-42 propeller. Allegedly, that aircraft is not yet approved to land at the airport in Murmansk and can therefore not yet be used on the cross-border flights between northern Russian and northern Norway.
Last year, Nordavia was bought by Norilsk-Nickel and it will likely be merged with existing Taimyr airlines, also known as Nordstar Airlines.
The Soviet built An-24 has been flying the route to Tromsø for the last 20 years and is considered to be the real working horse in east-west communications within the Barents Region. It is still not clear when the last flight with the aircraft to Tromsø will happen.
