Last week, a SpiceJet Q400 aircraft operating from Goa to Hyderabad made an emergency landing in Hyderabad after smoke entered the cabin. This raised further questions for an airline that is already in the dock for safety issues. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation had ordered SpiceJet in July to operate only 50 percent of its approved schedule in view of safety concerns.
A couple of things came to the fore in the DGCA’s statement. The regulator directed the airline to take enhanced safety measures on the 14 operational Q400 aircraft. As of the last update on its website, the airline has 32 Q400s registered, indicating that 18 of them were grounded.
From being the first in the country to move away from the tried and tested single-fleet model and inducting the Q400s, to being one of the early operators of the 90-seat variant, and to getting into a dispute with Bombardier and then De Havilland Canada (the new owner of Q400), SpiceJet has had a love-hate relationship with the aircraft.
The Canadian company had sued SpiceJet for failing to make pre-delivery payments for 20 Q400 aircraft. The issue was subsequently settled in December 2021. The Q400 production line is currently suspended, leaving no scope for the induction of additional factory fresh Q400s in SpiceJet’s fleet.
Regulator’s proposals
The regulator said in its statement that preliminary findings showed engine oil in the engine bleed-off valve, which led to oil entering the air-conditioning system and resulting in smoke in the cabin.
The aircraft is powered by PW150A engines built by Pratt & Whitney Canada. The regulator has directed the airline to collect samples and send them to Pratt & Whitney Canada for analysis to ascertain the presence of metal and carbon seal particles and inspection of bleed-off valve screens for evidence of oil wetness.
The DGCA also directed the airline not to send the engines to Standard Aero - Singapore for overhaul and maintenance till the investigation is complete.
The last set of instructions involves drawing oil samples every 15 days – instead of every 30 days – to be sent to Pratt & Whitney Canada for analysis, a one-time boroscopic inspection of all operational engines, introduction of weekly inspection of the bleed-off valve, and immediate inspection of the magnetic chip detector for the presence of metal particles.
All these points will be needed to isolate the issue and ensure such incidents are not repeated. The ironic situation in this case is that SpiceJet is the only operator of the Q400 in the country, making it impossible to compare it against others.
While the regulator has not asked for the fleet to be grounded, the enhanced surveillance and inspection means increased effort just when air traffic has picked up. Additional ground time, if needed, could impact its schedule. Additionally, for an airline going through financial stress, any additional cost is always an unwanted expenditure.
Regional mainstay
In 2011, SpiceJet received its first Q400 aircraft. In 2018, the airline became the first worldwide to induct the 90-seat version of the aircraft. From 2011 to 2022, the airline has undergone many changes – including ownership – but what has not changed is its Q400 mission.
With a much longer range than the ATR and faster than the ATR, the airline has been able to deploy Q400s on a mix of missions. Short-haul medium volume or longer low-volume ones like to Gwalior from Bengaluru.
The schedule shows that multiple routes in the Q400 network are monopolies – both under and outside UDAN, the regional connectivity scheme.
For the airline and passengers
The regulator has not ordered grounding of the aircraft or any additional curtailment of schedule. From a passenger point of view, enhanced surveillance and increased safety measures are a boon. There is unlikely to be an operational disruption due to this issue. But routes like Bengaluru-Gwalior, Gwalior-Jammu, Delhi-Kandla, Pune-Bhavnagar, Patna-Amritsar, Delhi-Pakyong, Varanasi-Guwahati and countless others are dependent on the Q400s.
From the airline’s perspective, if the investigation reveals that the root cause was not its own maintenance team but issues with external factors like oil quality or product quality or poor MRO (maintenance, repair, and operations) service, it would be a case of being struck by lightning and bitten by a snake.
Keeping this aside, when the regulator allows the airline to start full operations, will it have the money to get the 18 grounded aircraft back up? At least three were converted to carry cargo, which is ailing. Nothing is known about the others, but passengers have photographed them with an engine missing or the landing gear covered at airports across the country.
For any airline to grow, it needs revenue and revenue comes from flying passengers and not grounded planes.
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