AVIATION/ BOMBARDIER ON SCENE OF AIR NELSON ACCIDENT

The manufacturer of AIR NELSON Dash 8-300 that was forced to crash land without its nose wheel in Blenheim, New Zealand, yesterday, has defended its safety record. Air Nelson Flight 8306 was on Domestic Service from Hamilton to Wellington, New Zealand, on behalf of AIR NEW ZEALAND, when the nose gear failed to deploy as the aircraft approached Wellington. The aircraft circled over Wellington, pictured above, trying unsuccessfully to lower the nose wheel, before being diverted to Blenheim Airport about 2pm. The crew landed without its nose gear and scraped along the runway before coming to a stop. Emergency Services was in attendance for the landing and immediately deployed to assist those onboard. None of the 44 passengers and crew onboard the Q Series Bombardier Dash 8 were injured. A statement from Bombardier Commercial Aircraft in Canada said the Q-series planes remained a "robust and reliable aircraft" despite problems reported with the landing gear. More than 1000 Q-series Bombardier Dash 8 aircraft are in service with more than 100 operators around the world, logging 21 million flight hours and more than 26 million takeoffs and landings, they said. Yesterdays incident was the 3rd in 5 days involving landing gear on Bombardier aircraft. The other 2 incidents took place in New York and Wisconsin. In 2007, at least 5 crash-landings of various Bombardier turboprops in Japan and Europe, some of them within days of each other, prompted the grounding of some Airlines' fleets. FAA documents reveal at least 3 other landing gear incidents with Bombardier jets since 2008. No deaths or serious injuries resulted from any of the incidents. A company spokesman said the aircraft manufacturer was working with Air New Zealand to prevent a reoccurrence of the landing gear failure. Bombardier said company officials would arrive on scene today. It would respond to any and all actions recommended by the authorities after a review of the incident, he said. Air New Zealand said today there was no intention of grounding the 23 strong fleet of Dash 8 aircraft, pending an investigation. "Absolutely not, no. You can knock that one on the head," a spokeswoman said. Last September 30, the nose wheel of an Air Nelson Dash 8, Flight 8441, also on service for ANZ, collapsed as it landed at Blenheim Airport, where it had been diverted from Nelson due to bad weather. That aircraft also scraped along the runway on its nose before it stopped. The ANZ spokeswoman said the 2 nose wheel incidents did not appear to be related. New Zealand's Civil Aviation Authority is leading the investigation into the crash.