Arne Petryshen
Emergency crews were on hand as an Air Canada Jazz flight returned to Canadian Rockies International Airport late Tuesday night due to a potential mechanical issue.
Debra Williams, manager of corporate communications at Jazz Aviation LP, confirmed that shortly after departure from Cranbrook Tuesday night, the flight turned around.
“The crew had experienced an irregularity with one of the engines and elected to shut the engine down,” Williams said. “The flight landed safely and without incident back in Cranbrook.”
Flight 8220 was enroute to Vancouver when the crew noticed the issue, requested a priority landing and returned to Cranbrook.
Tristen Chernove, airport manager at Canadian Rockies International Airport, said the airline returned to the terminal after being in flight for approximately 30 minutes.
Emergency crews were waiting as a precaution when the flight landed, he said.
“Everything rolled out according to the Emergency Response Plan, which I’m really happy about,” he said. “Flight services followed their procedure, did their call out to police/fire/ambulance and myself.”
Chernove was called in around 11:30 p.m.
“Everything went very well from the response side,” he said. “And the aircraft landed without incident.”
Chernove said events like this are fairly rare.
“The industry has so many safety measures in place that, when something isn’t exactly the way people (crews) want to see it, we see flights make alternate arrangements when necessary,” he said.
Chernove said the flight was then delayed until Wednesday Morning.
The airport recently conducted its annual Emergency Response Tabletop Exercise. Every year the airport conducts the tabletop exercise, with a full scale emergency exercise every few years.
“This was a good opportunity to test the emergency response plan,” he said. “It was great to see all the emergency response agencies respond and have a bit of a training opportunity without any negative incidents, and we’re glad to see Air Canada following their procedures to be safe.”
The airplane is operated by Jazz Aviation as Air Canada Express and is a Dash 8 #300. Williams noted that Jazz Aviation apologizes to the passengers for the inconvenience. There were nine passengers and three crew members on board on Tuesday night’s flight.