The DGAC nails all the planes of the company Air Antilles Express to the ground for security breaches – teller report

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The decision is brutal and extremely rare. Perhaps a French airline has never seen its entire fleet grounded by the French authorities for security reasons. Friday evening, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) suspended the air carrier certificate of Air Antilles Express for missed review deadlines. The 11 Air Antilles planes (7ATR and 4 Twin Otter) are therefore on the tarmac, and the” all the flights of the company, a subsidiary of the Interregional Express Airline (CAIRE) based in Guyana (which had launched an advertising campaign at the beginning of the summer on the resumption of its flights in the Caribbean arc), are canceled between Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint-Martin, Dominica, Saint-Barthélemy, and all the other Caribbean islands such as Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, or even to Guyana or the United States (Miami). Curiously, flights are still available for sale this Sunday morning on online tour operator sites like Go Voyages and Opodo …

Serious safety breaches: “8 major non-conformities”

It is the Organization for the safety of civil aviation (OSAC), charged by the DGAC with the technical control of civil aviation which noted that the “calendar stops” (the delays between the revisions of the planes) do not were not respected.

The DGAC, in view of the Osac report, sent a scathing letter to CAIRO:

During the monitoring of your organization since the start of 2021, we have observed 8 major non-conformities, concerning the ATR and Twin fleets, which demonstrate that your management system does not allow you to control compliance with the required procedures. to ensure the airworthiness of these fleets of aircraft and the adequacy of procedures “, is it written in the DGAC report sent to Air Antilles, according to La Première.

Reinforced surveillance for 6 months

Maintenance is an essential subject in civil aviation, and the OSAC, in view of the irregularities in the checkbook, has indicated that it expects “adequate corrective measures” to lift the suspension. If this were not the case, CAIRO would have its ATR and Twin Otter operating approval permanently withdrawn. The airline is also placed under a reinforced surveillance regime for a period of 6 months.

Joined by La Première Friday evening, lhe CEO of Air Antilles, Éric Koury, also at the head of the consortium of private and public investors in Domiens which bought Corsair last year, recognized a maintenance problem but on only one aircraft, a Twin Otter. He explained that the latter had been sent for a long time to the United States for a wing change but that he had “never carried passengers”. The CEO said he regretted that this incident weighed heavily on “doubts about the reliability of our airworthiness monitoring system for the rest of the fleet”.

“The new shareholders will give Corsair a very significant strike force” (Pascal de Izaguirre, CEO)

Corsair officially changes owners and refocuses on the overseas departments

Traffic collapse and price war, a tough time

That said, Eric Koury assured to have done everything to provide an adequate response to the OSAC on Saturday, hoping to relaunch its fleet in the “very next days”. The only ones authorized to fly, but only for a period of one month decided by the OSAC, are a Cessna Caravan (Air Antilles) and three LET 410 (Air Guyane).

The upturn in July, when Air Antilles was preparing, like other companies serving the area, to increase its routes throughout the Caribbean area had been wiped out by the Covid-19 epidemic outbreak in early August.

[Un exemple de publicité par mail réalisés par la compagnie Air Antilles au début de l’été. DR]

With the traffic collapse, this incident pushes even further the hopes of restarting the airline, especially since, throughout the sector, a price war has been raging since the end of 2020 which could resume in earnest in the get out of this harsh period.

The prices of plane tickets are falling on the French overseas departments and territories (Air France, French Bee, Air Caraïbes, Corsair, Air Austral, Air Tahiti Nui)