In Indonesia at the moment the 'hot ship' for Combi operations outside of Java (Kalimantan , Sulawesi and Irian Jaya) on shorter strips is the BAE-146
I have never had anything to do with these aircraft but have had a few friends that maintained and flew them 20 yrs ago in Australia when they used to say BAE stood for 'Bring Another Engine'
When a local operator asked me my opinion on the 146 I told him I didn't know much about them but my gut feeling was they were the aircraft equivalent of an old Jaguar , cheap to buy and incredibly expensive to operate and maintain that would probably bankrupt him (compared to say a 737).
I made a couple of enquiries with some friends of mine on parts prices and my gut feeling seems to be true , close to US$1 million for a set of zero TSO undercarriage and other parts seem to be double or triple B737 prices , plus you have FOUR engines (some argue 5 APUs) to give you gremlins.
Compounding this remote operations in a place like Irian Jaya I would say a 20 or 25 yr old 146 wouldn't like to be too far away from a fairly sophisticated maintenance facility.
Am I wrong ?
What are the most frequent 'no go' problems with this aircraft ?
I've got my flack jacket on so fire away
