New Delhi: SpiceJet will now be "doubly careful" and strengthen inspection of aircraft before they leave to operate flights, airline's CMD Ajay Singh said on Wednesday. Aviation regulator DGCA issued a show-cause notice to SpiceJet on Wednesday following eight technical malfunction incidents involving the airline's planes in the last 18 days. "We will work with them (DGCA) to ensure that if they feel that there are any gaps at all in our system, we will address them. There is nothing more important than safety," Singh told PTI in an interview.
He said none of the incidents that have happened in the last few weeks have anything to do with shortage of spare parts. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), in its show-cause notice, mentioned the financial audit of SpiceJet in September 2021 according to which the airline is not paying component vendors regularly and that has led to shortage of spare parts.
"A lot of these incidents that are being reported are relatively minor in nature and happen to every airline. This is nothing unique," he said. When you have thousands of flights, sometimes the air conditioning will fail, sometimes a bird will hit the plane, and sometimes a fuel indicator will light up, he said. "These things are going to happen and, of course, we have to minimise that to the greatest extent possible. That is our job and it is the regulator's job to push us to make things better, which we will do," he said.