COPENHAGEN, Oct 28: About 50 flights operated by Scandinavian Airlines Systems (SAS) were cancelled on Sunday after an incident that forced Danish authorities to ground for a second time part of the airline’s fleet.

“We have 42 cancellations today (Sunday) which will affect some 2,400 to 2,500 passengers,” said SAS Denmark spokesman Mikkel Loendahl. The remaining cancellations were made by other companies in the SAS group.

On Saturday, Danish civil aviation grounded all Dash 8-400 planes in the SAS fleet after one made an emergency landing at Copenhagen airport. None of the 44 passengers and crew on board were seriously injured.

According to Danish police cited by Ritzau news agency, the landing gear in the plane’s right wing failed to deploy.

The Danish Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA) announced the flight ban on Saturday following a string of incidents since early September involving the planes made by Bombardier in Canada. On Sept 12, SAS grounded its entire fleet of 8-400s after two planes’ landing gears failed in separate incidents.

Inspections later found that the insides of the landing gear bolts on the entire Dash fleet of SAS were corroded.

But after that ban was lifted another 8-400 had problems with its landing gear whilst in mid-air on Oct 10 and was forced to return to Copenhagen airport.

SAS operates 27 of the 8-400s, which are used on many Nordic regional routes and for connections to close destinations such as Germany, Poland, Britain and Luxembourg. The SAS spokesman said the situation was ‘regrettable but we must face the fact that other cancellations will have to be made’, adding that eight flights set for Monday would not take off.—AFP