Saturday, February 1, 2014

Vanilla Air Airbus A320 grounding forces cancellations.

Vanilla Air's (JW/VNL) Airbus A320-216(SL) JA01VA was grounded on January 29th after completing flight JW902, the return leg of the inaugural Tokyo/Narita (NRT/RJAA) - Sapporo/New Chitose (CTS/RJCC) route.

Around 1100 local time, the hydraulic system indicated malfunctions, but the flight landed safely with the back-up system working properly. The airline later learned that a component needs to be replaced, but it needs to be shipped in from overseas. Four flights (two round-trips) were canceled on January 29th, and six flights (three round-trips) have been canceled every day since January 30th. Vanilla Air is offering passengers re-booking on its own other flights, or a full refund.

Being a new start-up LCC, Vanilla Air only had three aircraft running a tight schedule, so this is certainly a blow also when considering it happened on the return leg of an inaugural route.

Source: Aviation Wire (in Japanese)

2 comments:

  1. Hi. Is this air plane always delay and new? This airline seem not many people using it. Please advice is this plane secure and exist in Narita Airport. Thank you.

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  2. Hi. Thanks for leaving a message. Vanilla Air is trying hard to fill its seats, but they're getting better. As with most other LCCs, they run on a tight schedule, and with a small fleet they don't have much room for aircraft groundings. Using congested Narita is also one of the factors delays are frequent. Both of Tokyo's airports are too busy.

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