Following an inspection last week, the Federal Aviation Administration is allowing Taga Air to fly only chartered flights between Saipan and Tinian.<\/p>\n
Commonwealth Ports Authority officials said yesterday that Taga Air is \u201cgrounded\u201d again, pending compliance with necessary federal regulations.<\/p>\n
Tinian port manager Ike Perez said that Taga Air could still fly charter flights, but not regular or scheduled flights.<\/p>\n
Tinian Dynasty Hotel and Casino general manager Tom Liu clarified that Taga Air \u201cis flying on charter basis.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taga Air is operated by Saipan Travel Inc., a business affiliate of Tinian Dynasty Hotel and Casino.<\/p>\n
Liu declined to specify the reasons that prompted the FAA order, besides saying that, \u201cWe want to clarify the procedures with FAA.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liu said that FAA is shortly set to grant the operator a \u201cbasic 135 certificate\u201d to allow them to utilize five pilots.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hope to get the certificate this week,\u201d said Liu.<\/p>\n
He said Taga Air intends to operate 24-hours once fully compliant with FAA regulations.<\/p>\n
Right now, Taga Air has nine aircraft consisting of two Cessna 172, which carry three passengers; one Cessna 402, which carries nine passengers; one Cessna 150, which carries two passengers, including the pilot; four Cherokee 300, which has a capacity of six passengers each; and one Baron 55, which has a capacity of six passengers. <\/p>\n
Liu said not all nine aircraft could fly right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe take turns,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When asked by the board, Perez described Taga Air planes as \u201cnot brand new but airworthy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taga Air had temporarily stopped its nightly Saipan-Tinian flights last December reportedly due to some problems with contract agreements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Following an inspection last week, the Federal Aviation Administration is allowing Taga Air to fly only chartered flights between Saipan and Tinian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}