ASA to resume normal flights Thursday

Delta Connection carrier Atlantic Southeast Airlines said it expects to resume normal operations by Thursday afternoon after grounding 60 of its regional jets for maintenance inspections late Tuesday.

“ASA’s voluntary reinspection has been successful and we’re on track to resume full operations with a normal flight schedule by mid-day today,” spokeswoman Kate Modolo said in an e-mail statement Thursday morning.

John Spink / jspink@ajc.com

Hangar and maintenance crews were lining up ASA planes for inspection at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on Wednesday morning.

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She said the airline, which operates as a Delta contract carrier in Atlanta, had to cancel 272 flights over a 42-hour period because of the grounding. Modolo said most passengers were “re-accommodated on other flights within a matter of hours.”

The unusual move to ground the 60 jets came after ASA discovered it had improperly inspected them during critical probes that looked for engine cracks.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday that ASA self-reported the problem and grounded the planes late Tuesday, so that the planes could be ferried to ASA maintenance facilities to be re-inspected.

FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said the engine inspections are required after 5,000 hours of flight and are considered a major safety precaution.

“We don’t know how much these inspections were over-flown,” Bergen said. She said the agency has FAA inspectors at ASA maintenance facilities overseeing the re-inspections. During the inspections, cameras are inserted inside critical parts of the jet engines to check for cracks, Bergen said.

Only 50-seat Bombardier CRJ200 jets were affected. ASA has a total of 150 planes, according to its Web site.

ASA is one of Atlanta-based Delta’s biggest contract carriers, accounting for 396 daily departures from Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Delta books passengers on ASA flights and numbers the flights as its own.

Modolo said an internal audit revealed concerns about whether the ASA jets’ engines had been inspected according to the engine manufacturer’s recommendations.

The FAA sometimes orders inspections of commercial aircraft when maintenance issues arise, but mass groundings are unusual.

ASA is based in Atlanta but is now owned by Utah-based SkyWest Inc. Delta formerly owned the carrier as a subsidiary but sold it to SkyWest in 2005.

— Staff Writer Mike Morris contributed to this report.