Kuwait Airways Corp. has decided to ground several ageing planes for repeated malfunctions, KAC chief Salem Al Othaina was quoted as saying in report yesterday.

Othaina told Al Rai newspaper that “initially three to five planes” would be grounded this week “in prelude to take new decisions to ground further aircraft.”

The state-owned carrier has a fleet of 15 Airbus and two Boeing aircraft that were acquired about 20 years ago and have encountered many technical problems in the past few years.

“Safety conditions have deteriorated because of repeated malfunctions in some planes which necessitated taking such a decision,” said Othaina, who is also Kuwait’s communications minister. His comments came as media reported that a KAC flight from Kuwait to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia narrowly escaped disaster after one of its engines burst and a second broke down. The Airbus A300 with 186 passengers on board made an emergency landing on Wednesday in the city of Madinah.

Kuwait’s parliament passed a law in January 2008 to privatise the loss-making carrier but the government in October put the brakes on the plan and agreed instead to restructure KAC after private buyers offered a low price.