NEW DELHI: A day after SpiceJet was ordered to operate half of its approved schedule, its Mumbai-Kandla flight aborted take-off at Mumbai on Thursday after getting a caution alert. The aircraft safely returned to the bay and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is examining the issue.
“A Q400 aircraft scheduled to operate from Mumbai to Kandla rejected take-off owing to illumination of a caution alert. Crew acted as per the standard operating procedure. There was no safety scare. The aircraft returned to the bay, and all passengers and crew safely deboarded,” said an airline spokesperson.
After analysing a spate of incidents on SpiceJet flights over a month back, the DGCA, in an interim order on Wednesday, had asked the airline to operate a truncated schedule —half of the allowed fights — this summer and that too under “enhanced surveillance”. The cash-strapped airline will be allowed to scale up operations only after proving that it has “sufficient technical support and financial resource to safely and efficiently undertake such enhanced capacity. ”
However, SpiceJet anyway has been operating about 300 flights daily for the past few weeks which is half of the approved weekly 4,100-odd flights. So this order may have no impact on the airline operationally, apart from SpiceJet planes being subjected to stricter checks.
SpiceJet said all its flights departed as scheduled on Thursday. “There were no cancellations. There has been absolutely no impact on our schedule following Wednesday’s order.
This has been possible as SpiceJet, like other airlines, had already rescheduled its operations due to the current lean season. We would like to once again reassure our passengers and travel partners that our flights will operate as per schedule in the coming days and weeks. SpiceJet is confident of scaling up its operations and addressing any concern the regulator may have on priority,” the airline said in a statement.
