Jeff Colbourne
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 13/98) - Fallout from the crash of TWA Flight 800 last year off the coast of New York has reached the NWT.

Over the weekend and earlier this week sudden inspections of NWT Air and Canadian Airlines 737s delayed and cancelled flights across the North, Canada and the U.S.

"We didn't have any specific aircraft that were affected," said Kelly Kaylo, regional director of sales and government relations with Canadian North.

"How we were affected in the North, I guess, in that while some of those aircraft were off-line being inspected, other aircraft filled in to maintain routes and some of our aircraft were used for various routes in the South. So there were delays in our scheduled service and there were delays throughout the system."

NWT Air-First Air was not so lucky. Flights were delayed and cancelled on Monday, particularly those to Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet and Inuvik.

Mike Billington, manager of flight operations control with First Air in Ottawa said once the airline received notification from Boeing that there was potentially a problem with their airplanes they immediately withdrew them from service and undertook all the necessary checks that had to be done to satisfy themselves and Boeing that the airplanes were safe to operate.

"All I know is that they were certified as being fully serviceable this morning. What the actual maintainer's did or did not find. I do not know," said Billington.

"As far as we're concerned they did all the checks that they had to do before they gave it a clean bill of health. Particularly the one out of Ottawa. The airplane out of Yellowknife. I'm not even sure if it's flying today."

First Air officials in Yellowknife were unavailable for comment.

The inspections stem from a Federal Aviation Association directive ordering older Boeing 737s to be inspected after some aircraft were found to have extensive wear in power lines running through their wing fuel tanks.

Exposed wires and holes in the piping are believed to have been caused by electrical sparks.

Officials feared the mixture of fuel, air and electricity could spark an explosion similar to the one suspected of destroying TWA flight 800 off the New York coast a year ago.

The order affected 15 per cent of 737s in the U.S.

Nineteen Canadian Airlines 737s were thoroughly inspected and passed over the weekend. Another 16 were being looked at on Sunday.

When Canadian Airlines made the air-worthiness directive last week Kaylo said they asked for inspections of aircraft in excess of 45,000 flying hours. Canadian North's three dedicated 737s fell safely under the mark.