When Indian airlines started witnessing an increasing number of safety-related incidents over the last few months, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) resorted to a measure generally reserved by aviation safety regulators for exceptional circumstances — grounding of aircraft. While planes with faulty equipment or worn out installations have been grounded on a case-to-case basis, officials at DGCA are of the view that the threat of the financial implications of not flying an aircraft has prompted airlines into conducting better maintenance of their planes. “We have grounded 16 planes over the last few months — 12 SpiceJet, two GoFirst and two Air India. Most of these planes have now been released to service. This exercise of grounding planes is yielding results and airlines are taking their responsibility more seriously,” a top DGCA official told The Indian Express. The first in this series of groundings happened in April, when the regulator ordered that a SpiceJet Boeing 737 plane with dirty seats and malfunctioning cabin panels will not fly until the deficiencies are repaired. The aircraft was repaired and released shortly after the grounding. The next month, DGCA undertook spot inspections of all airlines for aircraft parked at key airports like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, etc and pointed out various mechanical problems and cabin deficiencies. The last aircraft to be grounded recently was the Air India Boeing 787 plane that was on its way from Dubai to Kochi but suffered cabin depressurisation at 37,000 feet. “Airlines have been told on several occasions that they must not compromise on safety-related expenses,” the DGCA official said. Blanket groundings have typically been ordered by regulators in cases where technical issues with airplanes have caused serious accidents (like in the Boeing 737 MAX accidents) or when there are faults with jetliners that the manufacturer is in the process of resolving (like the 2013 grounding of Boeing 787 fleets for airlines across the world because of problems with the model’s batteries). In an interview with The Indian Express this week, DGCA chief Arun Kumar had said that lockdowns and curtailed airline operations due to Covid could be the reason behind the increasing number of technical malfunctions being reported by Indian airlines, adding that the regulator is enhancing its surveillance to minimise such events. The regulator also issued an order against SpiceJet asking the airline to curtail its operations to 50 per cent of the departures scheduled in the ongoing Summer Schedule. This had come in the aftermath of SpiceJet witnessing a series of technical malfunctions and consequent air turnbacks that led the DGCA to issue a show-cause notice to the airline. The show-cause notice also flagged SpiceJet's financial condition. Newsletter | Click to get the day's best explainers in your inbox Over the last few months, Indian carriers have been plagued by technical malfunctions ranging from engine snags and burning smell in the cabin to cabin depressurisation.
