Domestic Airlines Faced 338 Cases Of Technical Snags Till July This Year: Minister

New Delhi:

The government on Monday said that domestic airlines faced a total of 338 technical snags during the operation of planes this year till the month of July. Out of them, IndiGo faced a total of 206 snags followed by Air India (49), Go Air (22), SpiceJet (21) and Akasa Air (18).

Minister of State for Civil Aviation Gen. (Retd) VK Singh in a written reply in Rajya Sabha said that technical snags in an aircraft may be caused due to malfunctioning of components/equipment fitted on the aircraft and require rectification action by the airlines before the aircraft is released for operation.

In year 2023 till July, the highest numbers of technical snags were reported by IndiGo (206) Further, regulations require the operator to report all occurrences to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). These occurrences may be a result of equipment malfunction, due to weather etc. Some of the occurrences such as air turn back, aborted takeoff or a go-around are actions taken by the pilot keeping safety of operations in view and are usually taken to avert serious incident/accident, the minister said.

In the year 2022, a total 446 such cases were reported by domestic airlines out of which 215 were from IndiGo followed by SpiceJet (143) and Vistara (97).

Informing the House on the corrective efforts being made by the Government to check the technical faults, the minister stated that as per regulatory provisions, operators have to report all occurrences experienced during the operation of aircraft to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

The responsibility of taking action on technical malfunctions lies with the operator. DGCA has a system of conducting regular surveillance including spot checks and night surveillance to ensure that the operators/ organisations continue to meet the regulatory provisions. In case there is an increase in occurrence indicating the likelihood of non-adherence to procedures, DGCA may initiate a special drive of audits, he said.

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