Fuel troubles ground flights

TALLINN - The aviation fuel supply in Tallinn was suspended late Friday due to problems with fuel certification. This forced several airlines to delay or cancel flights over the weekend, writes Postimees.
The authorities, however, have allowed one of the two companies – Eesti Aviokutuste Teenuste and Naftelf Eesti - that offer fuel in the airport to continue activities.

“When we found out that the fuel available in Tallinn may be of substandard quality, we immediately notified airlines that we cannot re-fuel them,” said Erik Sakkov, board member of Tallinn Airport.
“This is a major scandal. Someone is going to get a huge bill,” said Sakkov.
He added that airlines then started to bring fuel from Riga and Helsinki. “A Lufthansa plane flew to Helsinki, but it took so long that the pilots’ workhour limit was met and they had to return to Tallinn by ferry.”
Another Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Tallinn landed in Helsinki and returned to Frankfurt. AirBaltic cancelled two Tallinn-Riga flights on Saturday.

Among others, Estonian national carrier Estonian Air was forced to use fuel from suppliers of nearby regions, and had to delay several flights.
On Sunday, Estonian Air’s flights Catania-Tallinn, Tallinn-Trondheim-Tallinn, Tallinn-London-Tallinn and Tallinn-Stockholm-Tallinn were delayed by about 2 hours.

Estonian Air said it was temporarily using fuel from other suppliers of nearby regions, and full uplifts of fuel were taken at destination airports, and they were working on finding alternative certified batches of fuel for its Tallinn hub.