Australian army says Nomad unsafe

Australian army says Nomad unsafe

CANBERRA (Reuter): The Australian army has recommended that
its locally-built Nomad planes, used widely by air forces in the
Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, are unsafe for military use,
it was reported yesterday.

The Australian newspaper said a confidential army report to
Defense Minister Robert Ray had proposed the Nomad planes be
permanently grounded.

"The army's report concluded the aircraft was unsafe for
military purposes and that the plane was only airworthy for
civilian use under strict conditions," The Australian said.

A spokesman for Ray told Reuters the minister had received the
report last week, but he could not confirm or deny the report's
contents.

The twin-propeller Nomad planes were designed in the early
1970s for short take-offs and landings by a state-owned
manufacturer and 170 were built between 1971 and 1984.

The army's 24 Nomads were grounded indefinitely last November
after a series of crashes in recent years and after the Civil
Aviation Authority (CAA) restricted them to longer take-offs and
landings.

Over 70 Nomads were sold overseas in the 1970s and 1980s, with
16 being used by the Indonesian military, 20 by the Thai military
and 10 by military in the Philippines.

Fifteen are used as civilian aircraft in the United States.
Defense sources told Reuters the report being considered by the
minister was commissioned when the Nomads were grounded.

The sources could not confirm that the report recommended the
scrapping of the army Nomads, but they said the CAA restrictions
meant they were no longer of much use to the army.

"They (the restrictions) mean that we can't use them out of
the strips that they were designed for as a short take-off and
landing aircraft and that we need them for," one source said.

Nineteen of the 170 Nomads built have crashed, killing 56
people.

Opposition defense spokeswoman Jocelyn Newman called on the
government yesterday to accept the army's recommendation. "People
will die," she told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.