An aircraft operated by Bek Air (BEK, Almaty International) was detained at Astana Nursultan Nazarbayev airport for fifteen hours last week, due to safety and technical reasons, the carrier has disclosed. It is preparing to sue local authorities over the matter.
The Fokker 100 UP-F1009 operating as scheduled flight Z9-2013 on the route Almaty-Astana-Aktobe returned to Astana following a failure to lock the landing gear after takeoff. The carrier performed a safety check and decided to ferry the aircraft back to its base at Almaty, however this flight was banned by the Astana Airport Police Department, acting on behalf of the Kazakh Main Transport Prosecutor's Office.
Following negotiations, the technical flight went ahead 15 hours after initially planned, a delay which Bek Air says had a significant effect on operations at Almaty. It is now preparing legal action against the Prosecutor's Office.
In a statement, the Prosecutor's Office said the technical flight could only be approved by an incident investigation commission, which had not been set up at the time of the incident, leading to the delay.
