SOLOMON Airlines says its Dash 8 aircraft will be temporarily taken out of service as part of its planned maintenance with a down time from Sunday 7th to Tuesday 9th June 2015.
The national carrier’s General Manager Operations & Commercial, Gus Kraus said the maintenance program is standard practice for the aircraft.
“Scheduled maintenance of our aircraft is a regular requirement depending on hours flown or specific time related events,” Mr Kraus said.
“In this particular case, the plan was to remove one of the engines to send for a shop visit due to the hours programmed requiring this event,” he added.
“After the shop visit, it will return and re-installed and we will remove the rented engine now being installed.
“The maintenance and engine change is in strict compliance with the manufacturer and CAASI approvals under our Part145 compliance which is our Maintenance approvals.
“We hope to have the Dash 8 in readiness for final approval as soon as possible and returned to flying duties by early next week,” Mr Kraus said.
“Normally, there would be minor disruptions for those days but interim schedules have been adjusted with our Twin Otter and Islander fleet to cater for this downtime event.
“We apologise to anyone who may be inconvenienced by this situation but we wish to reiterate that this event had to be carried out in accordance with the engine manufacturers programs and this has been planned for the past 6 months,” Mr Kraus reasserted.
The travelling public is encouraged to keep in touch with Solomon Airlines via the airline’s 177 dedicated toll free number or our Travel Centre on 20152 or 20031 for further updates.