By Daniel Morley
122 American Flights Cancelled as PSA Regional Fleet Grounded
The FAA has grounded most aircraft of U.S. regional carrier PSA Airlines. PSA is a wholly-owned subsidiary of American Airlines and operates flights under the American Eagle banner. The grounding is related to a maintenance issue with the airline’s fleet. The airline currently operates 130 aircraft, all CRJ-700s and CRJ-900s.
The issue is to do with a maintenance inspection of the airline’s CRJ series aircraft. The FAA last month issued an Airworthiness Directive (AD) for the Bombardier Challenger series of aircraft due to excessive corrosion in the aircraft’s nose landing gear. According to internal sources within PSA, the airline is not in compliance with this AD, which went into effect yesterday, Jan. 27. The Bombardier Challenger is the business jet variant of the commercial CRJ series and shares many of the same parts.
In the AD, the FAA noted, “The FAA is adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for certain Bombardier, Inc., Model BD-100-1A10 airplanes. This AD was prompted by a report that corrosion was found on the shock strut cylinders during unscheduled maintenance of the nose landing gear (NLG). This AD requires a modification of the NLG shock strut cylinder. The FAA is issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products.”
The AD refers to Bd-100-1A10, also known as the Bombardier Challenger 300, the sister jet of the CRJ series jets.
In a statement to AirlineGeeks, a spokesperson for American Airlines said: “Out of an abundance of caution, PSA Airlines has temporarily removed most of its aircraft from service in order to complete a necessary, standard inspection on the nose gear door. We are working with PSA and the FAA to immediately address the issue. We are working with our customers to arrange new accommodations on other flights and we are working to return the impacted aircraft to service.”
In a tweet from the airline, PSA confirmed that most of their aircraft had been removed from service to complete an inspection.
Most of our aircraft have temporarily been removed from service to complete a standard inspection. We’re working to resolve the issue and sincerely apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.
— PSA Airlines (@PSAAirlinesInc) January 28, 2021
The grounding is likely to disrupt thousands of travelers and incur a large cost for American to rescue operations. PSA Airlines is already experiencing heavy flight cancellations at American’s Charlotte hub. American does have other regional carriers, wholly-owned Envoy Air and Piedmont Airlines.
Although travel is still significantly down due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the weekend has typically higher passenger loads for airlines. Based on passenger counts from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), airlines see an additional 100,000 to 200,000 travelers on the weekend across the country.
PSA Airlines operates regional flights on the United States east coast from American’s hubs in Charlotte, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. The airline normally operates around 800 flights a day for American to 91 destinations. The airline has been in operation since 1980 and was purchased by US Airways in 1995. It was given its current name to protect the PSA trademark that US Airways owned.
AirlineGeeks has reached out to the FAA for comment and will update this story with any new information.
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