SAS grounds planes

SAS airlines have been hit by two incidents during the past month

OSLO, Norway (CNN) -- Scandinavian airliner SAS has grounded nearly half of its older passenger planes after a fracture was found in the landing gear of one of the jets.

Malin Engstedt, acting presidential spokeswoman for SAS, told CNN on Friday that 43 of the 63 MD-80 planes will be stopped from flying while safety checks are carried out.

Each plane takes about eight hours to survey, taking the work well into the weekend, Engstedt added.

Passengers can expect to be delayed by the work, she said, but it was unclear at this stage the extent of the disruption.

The crack was detected during a routine check on a plane in one of SAS' hangers.

The remaining SAS MD-80s have not been grounded because they have not flown so many times, or have been added to the fleet more recently.

An SAS plane was involved in Italy's worst civil aviation accident last month when an eight-seater Cessna plane is believed to have accidently taxied onto the wrong runway in bad weather as the SAS jet was about to take-off.

A total of 118 people died when the jet crashed into a baggage reclaim building at the Linate airport in Milan. An investigation is still ongoing into the cause of the tragedy.

SAS' technical problems are the latest in a series of setbacks to have hit the aviation industry recently.

European continental airlines, already struggling to attract passengers amid the economic downturn, have been badly hit by the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Passengers have been shunning air travel and investors have been rushing to pull their cash from companies being hit by falling trade and revenues.

The Belgian airline Sabena this week became Europe's first national airline to file for bankruptcy, threatening 12,000 jobs.

But it is only the highest profile case.

Swissair, which owns 49.5 percent of Sabena, is desperately searching for more cash to return its jets to the air. Swissair has applied under bankruptcy protection rules to be shielded from creditors.

British Airways, Europe's biggest airline, said after September 11 that it planned to slash 5,200 jobs, in addition to the 1,800 job losses announced shortly before that.

It would also ground 20 aircraft and reduce scheduled flights by 10 percent, it added.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has already cut capacity by 5 percent but warned it would have to implement further schedule reductions.

Italian national airline Alitalia is shedding 2,500 jobs, selling at least 12 aircraft including MD-80s, MD-11s and Boeing 747s and leasing other planes while also freezing new plane orders.

German carrier Deutsche Lufthansa is postponing orders for up to 15 Airbus A380 aircraft and four Boeing (BA: Research, Estimates) 747-400 wide-bodied jets. Boeing, the world's biggest commercial jet maker, is cutting up to 30,000 jobs.

UK airline Virgin is shedding 20 percent of its capacity and slashing 1,200 jobs.

But on the other hand, low budget airlines such as Luton-based easyJet, have announced expansion plans on the back of increased business.