Originally Posted by
tubby linton
There was a story told at the time that a BirmEx Saab 340 had fallen off the jigs during manufacture and that the aircraft was an utter dog.
Having spent the day thinking about it I remember going for an interview at Birmex and the Chief Pilot was not very complimentary about the aircraft.
Notably it was not delivered (new, to Birmingham Executive) until five months after first flight, at a time when other adjacent aircraft on the production line were delivered after a month or two, which is possibly a pointer to manufacturing problems. BirmEx handed it back almost right on 12 months later, which was possibly a financing break point. It was their only Saab. Thereafter it was in a Saab lease fleet, including its two years with Manx, until sold to KLM in 1991. They dumped it after just six months as well, unlike the rest of their Saab fleet which lasted a decade more, and it went to Australia, who seem to have got to grips with it, having now run it there for more than 30 years.
Individual aircraft which compared to their compatriots are "hangar queens", or worse, complete lemons, are not unknown, we had a discussion here a while ago about the 747 which Richard Branson's onetime Virgin Atlantic partner Randolph Fields picked up cheap to start his Highland Express short-lived venture, where the aircraft's complete unreliability was a significant part of the financial failure; It had been a maintenance nightmare from new till the day it was prematurely scrapped for multiple major established operators, who passed it on from one to another it seems in the belief that the huge engineering costs of the previous operator must have finally fixed it. But no.