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2 airlines cancel flights due to ashfall
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Posted on Apr 06 2005
Volcanic ash emissions from Anatahan prompted two carriers to cancel flights yesterday.
Japan Airlines called off flight number 947, which was scheduled to depart Tokyo’s Narita International Airport at 10am. Accordingly, the service that was supposed to leave Saipan for Narita at 3:50pm was also cancelled.
Cape Air, which has a code-share agreement with Continental Airlines, suspended all of its commuter flights beginning 11:20am. Affected were four Guam-bound flights going out of Saipan and five Saipan-bound flights coming out of Guam.
Continental Saipan station manager Ivan Quichocho said the flights were cancelled due to the danger posed by ash in airspace.
“Ash can sand up the paint from the aircraft and scratch the windshield, which will obstruct the pilot’s vision. More importantly, it can damage the engine,” Quichocho noted.
However, Continental’s Taipei-bound flight, which was its only scheduled international flight from Saipan yesterday, proceeded as scheduled. The Taiwan service was set to depart Saipan International Airport at around 6:15pm.
Northwest Airlines went ahead with its all of its flights yesterday. Northwest operates two Tokyo-Saipan flights and one Nagoya-Saipan service.
Freedom Air, the only commuter airline in the market other than Cape Air, also made no flight cancellations.
Meanwhile, Stanford Miyamoto, acting federal security director of the Transportation Security Administration on Saipan, said the ash fall had not affected screening equipment at the airport.
TSA’s explosive trace detectors are exposed to potential damage because they are situated in the airport’s unenclosed terminal.
Miyamoto said however that TSA has procedures for doing physical searches in place, in the event that the machines malfunction because of the ash fall.
