Aviation sector

As per information from the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the leading carrier Indigo having highest market share recorded 394 instances of technical snags while the Spicejet airline witnessed 313 such instances during the last two years. It is worth noting that Indigo has a fleet size of 300 aircraft while Spicejet has nearly 100 aircraft in its fleet.

As per the Union Ministry of Civil Aviation, the industry in FY 2020-21 suffered a loss of Rs 12,479 crore and in FY 2021-22 it was Rs 11,658 crore. In a reply at the Lok Sabha on Thursday, the Ministry said the Centre has taken various initiatives to support the aviation industry. The reduction in Value Added Tax (VAT) on Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) was taken up with state governments and union territories levying high VAT on ATF.

On January 9, a Go Air flight on the Bengaluru-Delhi route took off leaving behind 55 passengers in the passenger coach at the Bengaluru airport. The aviation regulator had issued a show-cause notice to the Accountable Manager of Go First, asking as to why enforcement action should not be taken against them for dereliction of their regulatory obligations.

The amendment will allow the passenger, who is downgraded involuntarily and is carried in a class lower than that for which the ticket is purchased, to be reimbursed by the airline. For the domestic sector, the reimbursement will be 75 per cent of the cost of the ticket including taxes.

As per the latest data of December of aviation regulator DGCA, Indigo carried 69.97 lakh air passengers during the month while Vistara and Air India carried 11.70 lakh and 11.71 lakh air passengers. Go Air, with 9.51 lakh air passengers, had a market share of 7.5 per cent during December.

As per the data released by the aviation regulator DGCA on Thursday, nearly 1.27 crore passengers were carried by the domestic airlines during December in the country as against 1.12 crore during the same period last year. The passenger load factor or occupancy of the airlines remained on the higher side in the range of 80 to 90 per cent.

More than 50 employees are now based in the state-of-the-art facility, with an additional 450 jobs to be filled over the next four years, the company said. The facility is co-located with Pratt & Whitney's India Capabilities Centre (ICC), which opened in 2022 to provide integrated global supply chain support, and the recently inaugurated Collins Aerospace engineering and global operations centres.

IndiGo had said on Tuesday that a passenger accidentally opened the emergency exit of a plane at the Chennai airport on December 10. The passenger had apologised, said the airlines. While the airline did not name the passenger, few opposition parties have reacted on the matter, claiming that the person responsible for the act was BJP MP from Bengaluru South, Tejasvi Surya.

According to the regulator, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has not yet issued any guidelines with regard to carrying pets in passenger compartments. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the US has permitted its airlines to have their own respective policies for carriage of pets in the cabin.

Moreover, the airline decided to offer all affected passengers one free ticket for travel on any domestic sector. "In line with our philosophy of customer centricity, the airline has decided to offer all affected passengers one free ticket for travel on any domestic sector in the next 12 months," said the airline in a statement.