TSB: No follow-up on Air Canada A320 emergency

By John Croft

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) has categorized a 14 April in-flight emergency of an Air Canada A320-200 (C-FTJQ) enroute from Montreal to Fort Lauderdale as a "class 5" event, the lowest priority in the agency's classification system.

A spokesman for the TSB says the aircraft's crew received a hydraulic oil pressure fault for the aircraft's inboard spoilers about 30min into the flight and decided to return to Montreal after discussing the situation with airline maintenance personnel. Flight tracking data from FlightAware.com shows that the aircraft was flying at 36,000ft (10,973m) at the time. After receiving the fault, the crew slowed down and reversed course.

©FlightAware

On short final to Montreal, TSB says the pilot felt "some vibration" and declared an emergency" but the aircraft landed normally and there were no further problems. After a maintenance visit, the aircraft was put back into service, says the TSB.

Audio from LiveATC.net however reveals that crew was less than confident during the final phases of the flight, telling controllers after landing that "it got very rough on the bottom end of the approach" and that they had "lost some of the controls". Pilots asked that the airport fire and rescue trucks follow the aircraft to the ramp "to err on the safe side."

The Aviation Herald publication is reporting that TSB yesterday said the aircraft's ground spoilers had been deactivated during earlier maintenance and had not been restored to service before leaving maintenance, allowing the control surfaces to "flutter" after the landing flaps had been deployed on final approach.

Air Canada could not be immediately reached for comment.

As a class 5 event, the TSB says the incident will captured as a statistic in its database but no follow-up will take place.