Flyglobespan admit double breach of air safety rules
02.07.08
Flyglobespan pleaded guilty to two charges of breaching civil aviation rules after allowing a plane with instrument failure to fly to New York at a court in London today. The Edinburgh-based firm admitted allowing a leased Boeing 757 to operate a flight from Liverpool Airport via Ireland to New York to take off when engine pressure sensors had failed.
The prosecution was brought by the aviation industry watchdog, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). It is the first time that the CAA has brought such a prosecution against an airline in over 10 years.
Westminster Magistrates' Court heard the crew had to manually adjust the throttle and use a handbook in order to operate the flight. The CAA told the court the crew on the previous flight to Liverpool had been informed about the problem. The company said there was never any risk to the passengers.
Alison Slater, acting for the CAA, said the sensors that indicate the thrust of each engine had failed on an inbound flight. She said that by declaring the aircraft serviceable to fly later that day, on June 28 last year, the company had breached safety regulations that require at least one engine pressure indicator to be working.
Stephen Spence, defending, said the sensors were not universally installed in all aircraft. He said: ‘The workload increases [when a flight is operated with no sensors], but it increases to what we would submit is an acceptable level, and well within the capabilities of the pilot.’
He said the crew on board the inbound flight had managed without incident or mishap to fly the plane for more than 6 hours after they discovered the fault, before landing successfully at Liverpool Airport.
He said the clearance of the flight to return to New York had arisen because of a misinterpretation of the rules. He added that the airline had been under no commercial pressure to continue operating the flight, as there were only 20 passengers on board when it took off [the route has since been scrapped due to a lack of demand].
Mr Spence added that the airline had recognised there had been a failure at an early stage and had rectified it. He said that the company had worked closely with the CAA and that the aircraft in question - which had been leased from Iceland Air, and had suffered a number of problems that summer - had since flown more than one million kilometres across the world, the equivalent of 42 times around the globe, perfectly legally.
District Judge Timothy Daber, said it was clear to him that the plane had been capable of working safely and agreed there was no danger to passengers. He said the incident was not a deliberate flouting of the minimum equipment list requirements and resulted from a misinterpretation. He also noted that the company had removed two senior members of staff responsible for the breach and had fully co-operated with the CAA.
But he said the sensor was ‘clearly there for a reason’, to enhance the safety of an aircraft, and that there was a ‘heavy duty’ on airline operators to ensure the minimum equipment list. He said that breaches like this could not be tolerated, and ‘any fine has to be commensurate with the considerable means of the defendant company in this case.' The case was referred to Southwark Crown Court for sentencing 'at a later date' not specified.
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