At the end of October, I asked whether Bombardier and SAS should kiss and make up over their differences. Yeah, sure there were three Q400 landing gear issues in two months, but what’s a little malfunction between friends?

Fortunately, that’s all water under the bridge now, and the two sides did come together to hash out a reconciliation. What’s the plan? Bombardier will fork over 1 billion Swedish kronor. That’s only about $164m today, but just wait a week or two and I’m sure that’ll rise to, oh , maybe $300 or $400m.

But wait, there’s more.

As part of the deal, SAS has to buy 27 new planes from Bombardier. Thirteen of those are CRJ-900 jets and fourteen are . . . Q400 NextGen birds. Whaaaaaaaat?!?

Oh yeah, they’re going back to the well. Presumably the title “NextGen” can be interpreted as “LandingGearNowWorks.” But I’d like to quote CEO Mats Jansson here from back in October. “Confidence in the Q400 has diminished considerably and our customers are becoming increasingly doubtful about flying in this type of aircraft.”

Uh oh.

So, they took a huge hit by grounding the entire fleet and saying it wasn’t safe. Now they’re going back to flying the aircraft. Even if everything is fixed up, this still is not going to be an easy marketing sell for the airline to the locals. I bet they’re wishing they hadn’t bad-mouthed it so much back then.

You have to love the Danes. It’s cold and dark for much of the year up there, so you know it has to be their sense of humor that gets them through until summer. This time, it’s the Q400 that’s in their sights after having several landing gear problems on SAS-operated flights.

Danish media conglomerate DR has put up a new game on its website called Dash ‘n Crash. For those who only know the Q400 by its short name, this might not be that funny. The airplane’s full name is the Dash 8 Q400. Ah, yes. You know this is going to be fun.

As the game asks, “Tør du lande et Dash-fly?” In English, I believe that translates to “Isn’t flying the Dash 8 more fun than eating pickled herring?” And oh yes, it is. I’m guessing your interest won’t last long when you realize it is impossible to land the Q400 without the gear either collapsing or falling off the airplane entirely. Sweet. Have at it yourself:

Judging from comments on previous posts in the last couple of days, I’m guessing many of you have already heard that SAS had yet another Q400 turboprop land with gear problems. This makes for an unbelievable third gear problem resulting in an emergency landing in less than two months. If you’d like to see the rather boring video of this landing, click here.

Before anyone had time to figure out what happened, SAS came out saying that they were permanently grounding the plane type and selling their fleet of 27 as soon as possible. That would certainly imply that SAS blames Bombardier, the manufacturer of the plane, for this. But is it their fault?

I’m not really convinced of that. There are many other operators of the Dash 8 in the world, including Horizon Air here in the US. They operate in the Pacific Northwest in a damp, cool climate not unlike that of Scandinavia. Their fleet is also about the same age as that of SAS with most aircraft being delivered in 2001. So why hasn’t Horizon had a single problem thus far?

Bombardier’s Marc Duchesne did say, “We did an internal investigation that confirmed there was no systemic problem with the landing gear of the Q400.” That would certainly point to something going on with the aircraft’s operation specific to SAS, but of course we just don’t know yet. Bombardier has also said that this problem was unrelated to the previous gear problems.

So, should SAS be grounding these planes and selling them off? It’s not an easy decision, but I would argue that it’s too early to make that kind of decision. They’re estimating this will cost the airline anywhere from $47m to $62m. (Actually 300m to 400m Swedish Krona.) That’s a lot of money considering they don’t even know what the problem is yet.

I think back to the DC-10, an airplane that had more than its share of serious problems. Unlike the Q400, its problems actually caused many fatalities, and it was ultimately grounded by the US for a short time until problems were fixed. That was a situation far more serious than what SAS is dealing with today, yet major operators like United and American did not walk away from the plane and sell their fleets. The planes were fixed and ended up having a good safety record until their retirement in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Of course, it’s easy for SAS to say that this is the third landing gear problem they’ve had and their customers have lost confidence in the aircraft. They have to get rid of it. But what if it really is something that SAS was doing? In that case, getting rid of the planes will only cost them more money without measurably improving public perception. If it is their fault, they’ll take the hit regardless. And what if it is an easily fixable problem? Will it be worth it to ditch the plane entirely? I remain unconvinced.

I completely agree that they should ground the aircraft until they figure out what’s going on and have other airlines do the flying for them in the short run. But selling the planes off right now seems premature. Let’s just hope they figure out what’s going on quickly so that it doesn’t have the opportunity to happen again.

What a strange week for the Bombardier Q400 and for Scandinavian airline SAS. After having the gear collapse on two separate landings within a couple of days, I think it’s safe to say there’s a problem here.

First, there was the landing in Aalborg, Denmark last Sunday. You can watch the really cool video coverage by clicking below.

That may look worse than it actually was. Everyone got out fine, as they usually do with gear collapses upon landing.

The second one happened yesterday on a flight to Palanga (Lithuania). According to the release from SAS, the flight apparently “experienced technical difficulties” and diverted to Vilnius (also Lithuania). Once again, everyone was fine, but there are really no details here, but I’m told it was again a landing gear collapse.

This makes sense because Bombardier immediately called for inspections on all Q400s with more than 10,000 cycles (1 takeoff and 1 landing count as 1 cycle). SAS decided to ground their entire fleet immediately until inspections could be completed even though not all of them had more than 10,000 cycles.

In the US, I believe this only affects Alaska’s regional airline Horizon Air. These guys canceled about a quarter of their flights yesterday and will do the same today. Make sure you check with them before you go to the airport to find your flight canceled. Other than that, nobody here should be affected. Continental will have Q400 flights from a regional partner starting next year but that’s not an issue now. And Hawai’i’s Island Air recently got rid of their Q400s as they try to survive.

I’m curious to see what this means going forward. If they don’t find any problems on the existing fleet, will they just started requiring inspections as each plane turns 10,000 cycles old? Something tells me that the accident investigations will turn up some common thread. If not, it’ll have just been an amazing coincidence.

Frontier Airlines announced today they’re going to buy 10 of the 74 seat Dash 8 Q400 turboprops made by Bombardier. They’re also looking for more regional jets to be operated by a partner airline in the near future.

This is good news for fans of Frontier, because it means expansion. Those Q400s are good for short to mid haul flights. I’m guessing you’ll see them flying around the Rockies to many a ski resort from its Denver base. It’ll give United a little competition and probably help bring fares down. Besides, it’s a pretty cool plane.

I’m guessing this is Frontier’s new strategy to avoid competing with Southwest. Southwest entered Denver recently and they’ve been expanding quickly. With only 737s, you won’t see Southwest flying to places those turboprops can fly. It means Frontier can expand and shift their traffic away from dealing with Southwest directly. We’ll see if it works.