On Thursday night 29 August, ZL139 arrived MYA at 1940, ten minutes late and then departed for MIM, taking off at 1956. It arrived MIM at 2051, 36 late as one of the two engines had caught fire and after adopting a holding pattern offshore, it had to make an emergency landing.
There were 19 passengers and three crew on board:
A Regional Express plane was forced to make an emergency landing at Merimbula Airport on Thursday night after...
www.illawarramercury.com.au
The aircraft was SAAB 340B VH-RXX. This aircraft entered service on 12 December 1991 for some USA entity called Business Express (now defunct) and then from 30 September 2003 has been owned by Rex, so it is 28 years old.
This was the second consecutive night that VH-RXX operated ZL139.
Yesterday, the MYA - MIM second sector of ZL139 was the aircraft's eighth for the day.
It's a given that ATSB will launch an investigation.
One wonders if the union(s) will make hay of this given that CASA recently undertook some investigations at the WGA engineering base and decalred that Regional Express did not have any safety problems.
ZL114 from MIM to MYA and on to SYD has presumably been cancelled on Friday 30 August.