Bond Air Services has temporarily grounded its fleet of 22 Eurocopter EC135T2 and P2 helicopters after an unspecified fault was discovered yesterday on an example operated for North-West Air Ambulance.
However, the operator stresses that the grounding - which it describes as a temporary suspension of service operations - is unrelated to the fatal accident in Glasgow on 29 November which involved one of its EC135T2s.
It says the aircraft in question "experienced an indication defect that requires further technical investigation" during the course of normal operations.
"We can confirm that we continue to investigate the technical fault that resulted in us temporarily suspending service operations yesterday. We are now conducting functional tests across each of our EC135 aircraft in order to gather more specific information," it says.
No further details were available on the nature of the technical issue.
Flightglobal's Ascend Online Fleets database records Bond as operating three EC135s on behalf of North-West Air Ambulance which were built from 2002 to 2005.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
