India’s aviation regulator issued a rare summons to SpiceJet Ltd. following several recent mid-flight incidents, giving the airline three weeks to respond and explain why no action should be taken against it for apparently failing to establish “safe, efficient and reliable air services.”
In a so-called show-cause notice dated July 5, the Civil Aviation Department’s Director of Air Safety Sanit Kumar said SpiceJet aircraft had on a number of occasions turned back to their originating airports or continued to their destinations with “degraded safety margins.”
A review of incidents since April shows “poor internal safety oversight and inadequate maintenance actions,” Kumar wrote. SpiceJet also hasn’t paid vendors and suppliers on time since September, leading to a shortage of spare parts, he said. And it has frequently invoked a clause for flights to go ahead even though some non-flight-threatening parts may be malfunctioning.
The airline’s commercial aviation license runs to May 16, 2023.
SpiceJet said in a statement that it’s committed to ensure safe operations for its passengers and it will respond to the aviation regulator’s notice within the specified time period. SpiceJet’s entire fleet was declared safe after the aviation regulator audited it a month ago, it said.
Incidents in the past few days include a SpiceJet Boeing Co. 737 Max diverting to Karachi due to an indicator light malfunction, followed later Tuesday by one of the airline’s Q400 planes making a priority landing in Mumbai after its windshield cracked. A SpiceJet flight from New Delhi on July 2 returned to the Indian capital due to smoke in the cabin. The planes all landed safely, but a backlash against the carrier is building.
SpiceJet came back from near-bankruptcy in 2014 to become one of the fastest-growing airlines in the world under co-founder Ajay Singh. But it struggled to make money in the cut-throat Indian market even before the Covid pandemic, prompting Singh to call for higher fares last month.
“Passenger safety is paramount,” Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia wrote in a Twitter post Wednesday. “Even the smallest error hindering safety will be thoroughly investigated and course-corrected.”
