Air West Airlines goes on hiatus with plane problems.

Aging fleet pulls carrier out of the skies for summer

Air West Airlines, a small regional carrier operating out of Long Beach Airport, has suspended operations and cancelled the reservations of about 600 passengers.

In many cases, the carrier has to issue refunds to passengers who had paid deposits or actually bought tickets.

The carrier stopped operating around June 1 but is expected to resume scheduled flights in California, Nevada and Arizona some time after Aug. 1, said Asher Milgrom, the airline's 35-year-old founder and president.

Milgrom said the carrier was forced to temporarily shut down because of problems with the airline's aging fleet of three Metroliner IIs, which can carry 19 passengers and were each about 20 years old. He said the planes had too many mechanical problems and the carrier decided to return them to the leasing company. The Metro IIs were leased from Fairchild Industries Inc.

Current plans are for Air West to lease six new Metro IIIs from Fairchild with options to purchase the aircraft, said Milgrom. He said deliveries could start this week.

Hank Price, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington, D.C., said Air West notified the agency when it stopped operating. Before it can resume operations with the new aircraft, Price said Air West will have to undergo what the FAA calls a "fitness examination" that will determine whether the carrier and its aircraft are capable of providing scheduled passenger service, said Price.

He said he could not say how long the examination could take because the time involved varies from carrier to carrier.

Price said Air West was not forced to shut down by the FAA.

A spokesman for Long Beach Airport, the home base of Air West, said the carrier was operating just two flights a day out of the facility when it suspended operations. An airport spokeswoman said the airline has said it expects to resume operations and noted the carrier still has a ticket counter inside the main passenger terminal.

Milgrom said Air West had to cancel about 600 reservations when it decided to suspend operations. He said all the passengers were notified about the canceled flights and that refunds have either been issued or are being processed.

"What happened is that we had to replace the aircraft sooner than we expected," said Milgrom. "We knew that they would have to be replaced but we didn't think it would be this soon."

He said since the carrier started operations in July 1992, aircraft load factors -- the number of seats sold -- were improving by about 15 percent a month and for the first 10 months of operation, about 35 percent of the carrier's seats were filled.

Milgrom said the load factor would be much higher except that new cities were added shortly before the carrier shut down.

Those new cities included scheduled service to Bakersfield and Palm Springs, Calif., Las Vegas and Scottsdale, Ariz.

Before the new cities were added, Air West primarily served Long Beach, Burbank

and Ontario, Calif., and Bullhead City, Ariz., which is across the Colorado River from Laughlin, Nev., a casino resort community.

The carrier also did charter work into Mexico, which was also suspended in early June.

Milgrom said in addition to the six new 19-passenger Metroliner IIIs, Air West plans to lease between six and eight commuter aircraft during the next year.

New service is planned for Fresno, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Calif., and Tucson, Sedona and Prescott, Ariz., said Milgrom. He said proposed scheduled service into Mexico has been put on hold until the future of the North America Free Trade Agreement is decided.