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L.A.B Flying Service, a local airline that flies to several smaller communities in Southeast Alaska, was shut down Thursday morning by the Federal Aviation Administration over safety concerns.

A statement from the FAA said it had given the airline a "letter of emergency revocation ... after several weeks of working on continuing aircraft maintenance issues."

"There was just a whole scope of safety issues," said FAA spokesman Mike Fergus, who declined to give specific details regarding what L.A.B. had allegedly done wrong.

The FAA's statement said the airline's operating certificate had been cancelled and the company cannot resume flying operations until it is issued a new certificate.

The FAA's letter of emergency revocation was handed to L.A.B.'s office at the Juneau International Airport on Thursday at 10:50 a.m.

Shortly afterwards, there were signs posted at L.A.B.'s check-in counter saying "No flights until further notice."

When asked about the shut down, L.A.B. employees refused to comment and stayed out of sight in their back office.

There were still a few stranded passengers near the L.A.B. counter trying to alter their travel plans.

Larry Carmichael and his son Brandon said they were bumped from a 10:30 a.m. flight to Skagway because it was oversold.

Carmichael said L.A.B. staff told him he would have to wait 30 minutes for the next flight, but the airline was shut down before then.

Carmichael said an L.A.B. employee couldn't tell him why the airline was being grounded, but told him: "I don't have a job."

Juneau resident Diane Mayer, director of the Southeast Alaska Land Trust, was trying to get to Kake for a meeting when she was told that L.A.B. was no longer flying.

She said she was taking the sudden change in her travel plans in stride as just another "Southeast Alaska travel story," but felt bad for the residents of Kake, who depend of L.A.B. as the only airline with regularly scheduled flights to the small village.

Gordon Jackson, a former president of the Kake Tribal Corp., said in a telephone interview that L.A.B. has been flying into Kake for decades and was important to its residents.

"The lifeline of the community has always been L.A.B. Flying Service," Jackson said.

He said the timing of the airline's shut down was particularly bad because Kake was hosting its annual dog salmon festival this weekend. Kake is a village of several hundred people located on the northern side of Kupreanof Island.

Last month the National Transportation Safety Board found that a 2007 L.A.B. flight from Kake that resulted in an emergency landing and a fire that almost claimed the lives of a pilot and two passengers was the result of, in part, inadequate inspection by the company's mechanics.

L.A.B. has had other accidents in the area, including three that resulted in 14 deaths since 1995.

In 2001, an L.A.B. flight crashed into a mountain near Haines, killing all six people aboard. Investigators found that the pilot error caused the crash. They also found that the pilot was taking antidepressants, and had not been cleared by the FAA to fly while taking that medication.

In July 1995, an L.A.B. flight crashed into a mountainside above Pyramid Harbor near Haines. Six people died. Investigators said that crash was caused by pilot error.

Two people died in the crash of an L.A.B. flight on Admiralty Island flying from Juneau to Kake in October 1997. The pilot's decision to fly into adverse weather contributed to the crash, investigators said.

An L.A.B. flight crashed into Davidson Glacier in September 1996, injuring four people seriously. Two others on the aircraft suffered only minor injuries.

And an investigation into a 1993 L.A.B. flight that crashed into a glacier near Juneau found that the company had "inadequate procedures concerning mountain operations."

L.A.B. flies to Skagway, Haines, Juneau, Excursion Inlet, Gustavus, Hoonah, Kake, Petersburg, Ketchikan and Craig/Klawock. Its business office is in Haines, and flight operations are based in Juneau.

• Contact reporter Alan Suderman at 523-2268 or alan.suderman@juneauempire.com.