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.