Austral Embraer 190 LV-CKZ at Buenos Aires Aeroparque (AEP) on 11Feb12. (Phil Perry Photo)
Austral Embraer 190AR LV-CKZ, c/n 439, which was damaged upon landing at Buenos Aires Ezeiza (EZE) on 15Nov13 returned to service on 19Dec13.
LV-CKZ was completing flight AU2255 from Rio de Janeiro Galeao (GIG) on the morning of 15Nov13 when it landed on EZE's runway 11 in rainy and windy conditions at 0545 hours, overrunning the runway by some 220 meters (730 feet) and impacting the localizer antenna with its nose. The antenna was substantially damaged but the aircraft only sustained minor damage.
The 96 passengers and 5 crew were evacuated using emergency slides and bused to the terminal. There were no injuries.
Austral claimed that the aircraft went off the runway "due to a sudden change in wind direction and speed".
The aircraft underwent extensive tests at the hangars of Austral's sister company Aerolineas Argentinas at EZE, including baroscopic inspection of the engines, changing of the tires and pitot tubes, cleaning of the fuselage, extension and retraction of the landing gears plus examination of the areas that impacted the localizer antenna. With the results being satisfactory, LV-CKZ made a ferry flight to Buenos Aires Aeroparque (AEP) on 28Nov13.
After some repair work at AEP, the Embraer was test flown on 18Dec13 and it re-entered service the following day, 19Dec13, with a flight to Mar del Plata.
Editor's Comments:
One anonymous comment made by a reader of the Linea ALA blog claimed that regarding the aircraft's test flight in mid-December "there were many faults during the flight, the situation with the plane is serious; many sensors and other components were affected, they are going to have to do a lot of work on the poor Embraer".
If true, this would be alarming, but the anonymous nature of the comment plus the highly-political situation with the management of state-owned Aerolineas Argentinas/Austral would lead one to question whether this comment was politically motivated.
Another reader of Linea ALA noted that Buenos Aires Ezeiza (EZE) runway 11 is 10,828 ft. long, plenty of room for an Embraer 190 to stop, probably even in adverse weather conditions, leading one to question if there was some sort of pilot error such as "landing long" (significantly further down the runway than normal).
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