A BUDGET airline which flew a faulty jet 3,000 miles from Liverpool to New York was fined £5,000.

Despite knowing two engine pressure ratio indicators (EPRs) were out of action, Globespan Airways used some “optimistic interpretation” of the rules to allow the Boeing 757 to take off with 20 passengers.

As a result, the crew were forced to manually adjust the throttle with the help of another gauge.

The failure was discovered hours before the incident on June 28 last year, during an inbound flight from New York’s JFK airport to Liverpool.

Despite this, the Edinburgh- based airline, which trades as FlyGlobeSpan, breached Civil Aviation regulations by declaring the aircraft “serviceable” to fly later that day, and return to America via Knock, in Ireland.

The company admitted two summonses under the Air Navigation Order 2005 of flying the plane without a valid certificate of air worthiness or a valid operator’s certificate.

Passing sentence, Recorder James Curtis, QC, said the EPRs allowed a pilot to monitor the thrust of each engine.

Although not “core” instrumentation – such data could be gleaned by using another type of gauge – it nevertheless provided an “extra layer of information” for the pilot.

“I am told and I am satisfied that the failure of the EPRs on this flight did not render the aircraft unsafe, and did not in any way endanger the public who were flying on that aircraft.

“In the event . . . that flight continued for some hours perfectly safely from JFK to Liverpool without any incident or difficulty. It rather placed extra burdens and pressures on the pilot and co- pilot to calculate manually the performance of the engines.”

The recorder said: “I accept this was a technical breach and therefore only a breach of Civil Aviation Authority requirements. But it was an important breach, nonetheless.”

However, he recognised the authority had not rescinded or suspended the airline’s operating licence.

He added that, in addition to a £2,500 fine on each breach, the company would also have to pay £4,280 prosecution costs.

Outside court, Rick Green, chief executive officer of the airline’s parent company, Globespan Group, said: “Clearly, we are pleased with the outcome and empathetic that the judge saw it in the manner that we always believed it to be.”