A joint protest by several European operators of Fokker aircraft expressing grievances over poor reliability has forced Fokker Services to introduce support measures.
In a letter to Jan van der Giessen, the Dutch company's technical vice-president, the group of airlines - the "Fokker 70/100 Customer Community" - details key points which it wishes to discuss in the light of reliability problems. There are five main concerns: a long lead-time on ordered spares, an unacceptable response time for aircraft-on-ground parts, poor quality of spares, unusually high number of C-check "findings" and a lack of general support, for which the airlines demand compensation because of their need for additional in-house support organisations.
A copy of the letter, dated 26 August, was obtained by the new Reed Aerospace on-line service, Air Transport Intelligence. It was signed by Fritz Simunek, vice-president technical division Austrian Airlines, on behalf of Austrian carrier Aeroplex Budapest, Air Littoral, Air UK, British Midland, KLM City Hopper, Malev and Tyrolean Airlines.
At a conference in late September, van der Giessen welcomed the initiative, and said that the company would implement the same standards of support as those of Airbus Industrie and Boeing.
Source: Flight International
