Concerned over the deteriorating condition of SpiceJet and large-scale flight cancellations, aviation regulator DGCA today withdrew 186 of its slots and asked it to clear salary dues of all its employees in the next 10 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 As many as 93 arrival and 93 departure slots were withdrawn by DGCA as the low-cost carrier was operating 232 flights in October, instead of 339 in September, sources said.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 was seeming 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.
SpiceJet in a late night statement on Friday said it intends to operate a fleet of 22 Boeing 737s and 15 Q400s, down from 37 B737s that it operated earlier this year (Q400 fleet remains unchanged) and that returning of unused slots to airport operator was a routine process.
"As a natural consequence of the fleet reduction of 15 Boeings, unused slots are given back to 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 carrier said.
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