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IndiGo Airlines confirmed on Friday it had received four show-cause notices from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) issued to senior officials in the airline’s Flight Operations and Safety Department. “This is under review by the company,” the airline said.
IndiGo, which enjoys a market share of over 49 per cent, is currently seeing a war of words between co-founders Rakesh Gangwal and Rahul Bhatia on issues related to corporate governance.
Show-cause notices were issued to Sanjiv Bhalla, Head of Training; Hemant Kumar, Chief of Flight Safety; Ashim Mitra, Senior Vice-President, Operations; and Rakesh Srivastava, Quality Assurance and Operations Safety, after the DGCA special audit team found multiple safety lapses.
The discrepancies were noticed during “unplanned surveillance” on the airline in Gurugram on July 8 and July 9.
The audit focussed on occurrence reporting, flight operation quality assurance (FOQA) monitoring and analysis, implementation of safety management systems, air crew training, flight operations and airworthiness.
The four senior executives have been given 15 days to respond to the show-cause notices, failing which the DGCA will take action.
FOQA is an analysis of flight data which allows safety managers to identify trends and fully investigate the circumstances behind the events that have been flagged.
This is so that flight operational procedures and training can be improved.
Among the allegations, the DGCA, said it had recommended corrective training by the Flights Safety and Operations Department based on an FAQA analysis. But it was observed that in a number of cases the corrective training was either not carried out or delayed.
Aviation norms
International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and DGCA civil aviation requirements make it mandatory for airlines to implement safety management systems within their organisation, which is seen as a proactive way of addressing safety issues.
The DGCA started enhanced safety audits after a number of instances were reported from across the country of aircraft overshooting the runway and lapses being observed at various airports.
It had earlier issued notices to SpiceJet for various lapses following a series of runway excursion incidents. It also issued show-cause notices to the Airport Directors of Chennai and Ahmedabad after inspections showed that some critical areas were not being maintained per safety standards.
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