Airline representatives will be part of a Committee being formed by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to look into the on time performance (OTP) of domestic airlines’ operations.
This assurance was given to Ajay Singh, Chairman and Managing Director of SpiceJet, at a meeting that he had here with BS Bhullar the Director General of Civil Aviation.
The SpiceJet CMD had sought time with Bhullar to express the airline’s serious concerns over the airline regulator setting up a committee to look into the OTP mechanism following a complaint by a domestic airline.
IndiGo is believed to have written to the DGCA complaining about the OTP mechanism. SpiceJet, however, alleges that as long as IndiGo was on top of the OTP ranking among all Indian carriers it did not complain about the mechanism.
In December last year, SpiceJet recorded the best OTP at Delhi airport while Jet Airways came at the top in Mumbai during the same month.
During the meeting with the DGCA it was also pointed out that the data collection mechanism at airports like Mumbai had been in place for many years.
Meanwhile sources in IndiGo indicated that the airline had questioned the discrepancy in the OTP data that it has noticed and provided this evidence of this to the DGCA.
“The reaction of some of the airlines is surprising. If their OTP data is indeed genuine there is no reason for them to be nervous or oppose a fair and independent investigation,” sources in IndiGo said.
OTP, which is a good indication of whether an airline is operating its flights on time, is determined from chocks off time in case of a departure of a flight and chocks on in the case of arrival. If the actual departure or arrival time is up to 15 minutes of scheduled time of departure or schedule time of arrival the flight is considered on time.