Created Sunday, Dec 20th 2020 09:34Z, last updated Wednesday, Dec 23rd 2020 20:45Z
An Air Niugini de Havilland Dash 8-200 in completely white paintscheme with no company logo, registration P2-PXI performing a positioning flight from Sapporo (Japan) to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (Russia) with 2 crew, was enroute at FL270 about 80nm northeast of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (Russia) when the crew requested to divert to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk reporting technical problems. The aircraft landed safely on Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk's runway 19 about 25 minutes later.
Russian media report the aircraft is kept under guard, the two pilots, only occupants, were taken to a hotel.
Following repairs by Aurora the aircraft was able to depart on Dec 22nd 2020 again after 39 hours on the ground and has already reached its destination in Calgary,AB (Canada) via Fairbanks,AK (USA).
According to local sources there was an oil leak through a seal of the left hand propeller. The seal was replaced.
Air Niugini sold P2-PXI to Canada, the aircraft was on the positioning flights to Canada. The aircraft had not been flown about 15 months prior to starting the positioning flights from Papua New Guinea to Canada on Dec 18th 2020.
