Sunwing Criticized By Safety Board For Failing To Report 2011 Incident

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Made the front page of today's Star here in TO

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/03/09/transportation_safety_watchdog_raises_concerns_after_charter_airline_incident.html

Sunwing Flight 531 was departing from Toronto en route to Cozumel, Mexico, with seven crew and 189 passengers on board when the pilots got erroneous airspeed indications during their takeoff roll. The problems continued during the climb as the stall warning sounded, suggesting the Boeing 737-800 jet was close to losing flying speed, and the instruments wrongly told the crew to put the aircraft into a shallow dive.

The crew ignored the erroneous warnings and maintained their climb before returning to Pearson airport for a safe landing.

At the heart of the investigation is Transport Canada’s safety management system, which puts more responsibility on individual airlines to track and assess risks and identify hazards within their own operations.

Except in this case, Sunwing Airlines didn’t see the incident as serious enough to warrant investigation by the airline’s own safety personnel and failed to report the incident as required to the safety board, the report says.

[Don Hudson]

Link to the TSB Report: http://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/aviation/2011/A11O0031/A11O0031.pdf