NCA - Nippon Cargo Airlines (KZ, Tokyo Narita) has announced it will suspend flight operations from June 17 onwards after discrepancies in the maintenance logs for one of its eight B747-8(F)s were uncovered during a routine inspection.
The Japanese cargo specialist said in a statement issued on Saturday, June 16, that an inspection on Thursday, June 14, showed a mismatch between the amount of lubricating oil present onboard JA14KZ (msn 37394) and that recorded in the aircraft's maintenance logs. The event was immediately reported to the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLITT).
"In the interests of caution and to ensure the safety of our operations, we have decided to temporarily ground all aircraft until all maintenance records have been confirmed as appropriate," it said.
Flights to/from Tokyo Narita will be gradually wound down through June 17 to enable inspections of all aircraft which includes three B747-400(FSCD)s. The entire grounding is expected to last around a week and will also affect NCA's codeshare flights.
NCA has been under intense scrutiny from the MLITT after failing to report several seemingly minor incidents involving its aircraft over the past year or so.
