Crossair boss plans recruitment drive to ease technical problems
The Swiss regional airline and SAirGroup subsidiary, Crossair, is seeking 70 new technicians, after three potentially hazardous air incidents involving Crossair planes in the past few days.
Crossair’s chief, Moritz Suter, told the Swiss newspaper SonntagsBlick: “We need these technicians as quickly as possible.”
After a turbulent week for Crossair in which three of its planes ran into technical trouble in mid-air, Suter said: “I am very disappointed with the bad week we’ve just had in terms of technical problems.”
However, Suter is also looking at ways of rejuvenating the ageing fleet of MD-80 planes. He explained that a decision would be taken in the latter half of the year whether to keep the aircraft.
The man who turned Crossair into one of Europe’s leading regional air carriers is also pointing the finger at the aircraft manufacturers. “We’re absolutely dependent on the technical quality handed to us by the manufacturers,” he said.
The most recent incident happened on Friday, when a Crossair passenger plane bound for Barcelona from Basel had to abandon its scheduled voyage in mid-air and land in Geneva due to an engine failure.
Two other incidents involving a Crossair plane happened on Thursday. A Jumbolino coming from Düsseldorf skidded off the runway after landing at Zurich airport. But no one was hurt.
A second Crossair plane heading to Genoa failed to pull up its undercarriage shortly after take-off from Zurich airport. As none of the runways were free at Zurich, the aircraft had to land in Basel to rectify the problem.
But the most embarrassing incident occurred recently when Switzerland’s justice minister, Ruth Metzler, was not able to complete her flight to Hannover on board a Crossair plane, after it was forced to head back to Switzerland with engine problems.
Despite the unusually large amount of recent incidents, Suter said: “It’s just a coincidence all this has happened in a short space of time. However, I am personally interested in sorting this out. Each incident is one too many.”
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