Though dozens of Horizon Air daily flights in its 46-city route system continue to be canceled because of the grounding of its Bombardier Q-400 propjets, service to Hailey's Friedman Memorial Airport has been fully restored.
A Horizon employee at Friedman said "a few" flights into Hailey were canceled last week when the 33-plane Q400 fleet was grounded Sept. 12 after two Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) Q400s were involved in landing gear accidents—one whose right gear collapsed on landing and the other that landed without the right gear extended.
Several Horizon flights serving Boise will continue to be canceled until Sept. 24 while the remainder of the Q400 fleet is inspected. Those flights are No. 2499 from Boise to Portland, No. 2363 from Boise to Seattle and No. 2325 from Portland to Boise. A complete list of cancellations until Sept. 24 can be found online at alaskair.com/as/www2/flights/Irregular-Operations.asp.
Horizon Air serves Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Oakland, Calif., out of Friedman Memorial Airport. The only other air carrier operating out of Friedman is SkyWest Airlines, whose only service from Friedman is to Salt Lake City.
The grounded 74-passenger Q400 is built in Canada. Though the mandatory grounding order to inspect the landing gear from Transport Canada applied only to Canada-registered Q400s, Horizon voluntarily suspended operating its fleet until landing gear in all the aircraft were inspected. Inspections are nearing completion. The airline reported that all the Q400s serving Friedman have been inspected.
Q400s make up nearly half of Horizon's 73-aircraft fleet.
One of the two SAS accidents is believed to have been caused by corrosion