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Faulty Light Caused Emergency Landing at Vancouver Airport: Cathay Official

Posted on: Saturday, 15 December 2007, 00:00 CST

By Erik Mjanes, THE CANADIAN PRESS

RICHMOND, B.C. - A Cathay Pacific airplane that made an emergency landing at Vancouver International Airport Friday was expected to take off again after the trouble was traced to a false warning light.

Airline spokesman Scott Mowrer said the Airbus A340, which was carrying 290 passengers and crew, turned back en route to Hong Kong after a indicator light for the wing flaps came on in the cockpit.

The plane dumped fuel before landing without incident back at Vancouver airport.

Mowrer said tests were done on the flap system and everything appeared to be working.

"We not only fix the problem, then we test the problem on the ground a number of times to make sure the flaps are working correctly," he said. "When it's refuelled, we'll take off again."

He said passengers would re-embark on the same plane to resume their journey, although some would would miss connecting flights.

Passengers remained on the aircraft and were fed while they waited to take off again.

The Cathay flight took off from Vancouver around 2:30 p.m. local time and landed again just before 5 p.m.

Nancy Baggio with the airport said as standard procedure, RCMP, B.C. Ambulance and Richmond Fire Rescue and a YVR emergency rescue were all dispatched to the runway.

RCMP stood by nearby bridges in case they were ordered to be closed, but the incident never reached that point.

Baggio said standby crews are dispatched for emergency landing around two to three times a month.

The federal Transportation Safety Board will open a file on the incident when the airline files its report, said Bill Yearwood, an official with the agency's B.C. office.

"We'll review that data to determine if there's any residual risk that we need to investigate," he said. "And if that's the case we would open an investigation."

Yearwood said he did not have the A340's safety track record at hand but "there's nothing that I recall that suggests or reminds me of a similar problem with this specific type."

This week, the safety board released its report into the 2005 crash of an Air France A340 at Toronto International Airport.

The jet slid off the runway while landing in a severe thunderstorm, plunged into a ravine at the end of the runway and caught fire.

All the 309 passengers and crew escaped - though some were badly hurt - but the board made a series of recommendations to increase landing safety, especially in bad weather.

It's the second air emergency the busy Vancouver airport has experienced this week.

An Air Canada Jazz plane headed for Kelowna, B.C., was forced to make an emergency landing at the airport on Wednesday after losing power in one of its two engines.

The Bombardier CRJ-100 jet was carrying 49 people and landed safely.

Airport spokeswoman Kate Donagani said Vancouver International Airport, one of Canada's busiest, experiences "standbys" - where a pilot reports a problem in the air - on a weekly basis but all are treated the same.

"It can be something very simple and it's a potential problem," she said. "So in that case we do dispatch all of our emergency responders to make sure that they're there and prepared for the worst-case scenario."

Source: Canadian Press

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