DGCA acts tough against troubled SpiceJet

New Delhi: Concerned over the deteriorating condition of SpiceJet and large-scale flight cancellations, aviation regulator DGCA withdrew 186 of its slots and asked it to clear salary dues of all its employees in the next ten days.

After reviewing the situation facing the no-frill carrier, DGCA chief Prabhat Kumar took a series of decisions, including asking the airline to file a "convincing schedule" by December 15 to clear its over Rs 1,500 crore dues to various vendors including airports and oil companies, official sources said.

The DGCA also directed the airline not to take bookings of flights over one month and refund the booking amount to the customers of cancelled flights in 30 days, they said. As many as 93 arrival and 93 departure slots were withdrawn by DGCA as the low-cost carrier was operating 232 flights in October, instead of 339 in September, the sources said.

The regulator would now on also carry out "heightened" surveillance of all SpiceJet flights on landing to ensure that safety is not compromised due to its financial troubles, they said. The measures came a day after Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said troubled SpiceJet seemed to "give us heart attacks". "We are running through a lot of turbulent weather...not only the public sector, private sector is also crashing. (With) Kingfisher crashing and, right now, SpiceJet seems to be giving us heart attacks as far as airlines are concerned," Raju had said.

Asking the airline to clear salary dues of all its staffers by December 15, the regulator directed it to disburse the salaries now on by the 7th of every month.

Meanwhile, SpiceJet, in a late night statement said that, returning of unused slots to the airport operator was a routine process. On the certain directions from the DGCA received by SpiceJet, the airline, will like to place on record that it has informed the DGCA and the public that for the near-medium term, it intends to operate a fleet of 22 Boeing 737s and 15 Q400s, down from 37 B737s that we operated earlier this year (Q400 fleet remains unchanged), the statement said.

"As a natural consequence of the fleet reduction of 15 Boeing planes, unused slots are given back to the airports. This is routine process and a natural outcome of our revised fleet plan, and there is nothing unusual about the slots being cancelled," the airline said. The future booking on cancelled flights has already been stopped as part of standard process, the statement said, adding SpiceJet believes the DGCA's directions on stopping of the future bookings in advance will be counter-productive.

The airline will be discussing the pros and cons of this cooperatively with the DGCA, it said. As standard practise, SpiceJet provides refunds of all bookings for cancelled flights made directly with the airline (credit card or cash) within an average of 10 days, with no deduction of any kind, the statement said. The airline also said that it has already paid November salary to 85 per cent of its staff, by and the remaining 15 per cent employees will get the salary by next week.