Spurs Charter Airline To Be Grounded

By now most Spurs fans have heard that "mechanical problems kept the Spurs' plane on the runway in New Orleans for seven hours" last night.

But how many fans realize that the Spurs charter airline, Champion Air, which boasts of "providing a superior travel experience built around safety and reliability" on its website, has a track record which is far from safe and reliable? In fact, Champion Air is going out of business at the end of the month.

Why in the world would Peter Holt have his employees, let alone our defending world champions, flying on such a dubious airline?

Last month the Express-News ran a story on the troubled airline, "Concern rises over Spurs' safety":

The charter carrier has been running its aged jets on a taut financial shoestring while racking up hundreds of safety and maintenance incidents, according to an examination of Federal Aviation Administration records.

Now, the carrier has announced it will ground its 16-plane fleet for good May 31, a casualty of financial duress and inefficient, fuel-guzzling 30-year-old planes that compete poorly against newer planes.

League and airline officials said the Spurs will continue flying the airline through the playoffs, which begin April 19, or until further notice.

If the airline is financially barren and shutting down, how safe are the Spurs going to be in the air?

The airline has had no accidents or crashes in the five years since it began and the Spurs became a customer. But the airline's planes have accrued what one aviation expert considered to be an unusually large number of "service difficulty" reports.

Of 598 such reports to the FAA of mechanical problems, 169 occurred while Champion planes were preparing for flight or already in the air.

Among these were 63 unscheduled landings, such as one in January 2006 when an engine failed in flight. In six other incidents, engines stalled or failed, causing two aborted takeoffs and another unscheduled landing.

Obviously, Spurs fans are not happy about this news.