Nippon Cargo Airlines (NCA) has received a business improvement order from Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation and Tourism (MLIT), while the remainder of its fleet is undergoing inspection to confirm each aircraft’s airworthiness.
The entire NCA fleet was grounded on June 17 after discrepancies in the maintenance logs for one of its eight B747-8F aircraft were uncovered during a routine inspection. The inspection showed a mismatch between the amount of lubricating oil present onboard flight JA14KZ and that recorded in the aircraft's maintenance logs.
The business improvement order covers several violations of Civil Aeronautics Law of Japan, including inappropriate maintenance for the aircraft structure; organised manipulation and concealment of corresponding maintenance records and a report delay to the MLIT.
Since the grounding of flights, two of NCA’s B747s have returned to service, while the majority of services remain suspended.
“We are re-evaluating our internal processes and controls since our analysis and preventive measures for the ‘written warning’ NCA received from the MLIT on October 5, 2016 did not prevent these same types of discrepancies in our operation.
“NCA is utilising a third-party company to assist in evaluating the root causes of our failure and examine preventive measures immediately, and report it to the MLIT by a date,” said NCA.
