With as many as eight technical malfunction incidents involving SpiceJet planes reported over the past three weeks, a significant number of domestic fliers are avoiding the airline over safety concerns, a new survey conducted by community social media platform LocalCircles has found.
On the question of whether the fliers were avoiding any particular airline due to safety concerns, 44% of those travelling on domestic routes said that they were keeping away from SpiceJet flights, while 21% selected Air India and IndiGo, 18% Go First, 12% AirAsia and 6% Vistara. The respondents were given the option of choosing more than one airline for this particular query, which garnered 16,128 responses.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Wednesday issued a show-cause notice to SpiceJet over the technical snags, flagging safety oversight, inadequate maintenance and payment-related shortage of spares.
On Tuesday, a SpiceJet freighter aircraft, which was heading to Chongqing in China, returned to Kolkata as the pilots realised after the take-off that its weather radar was not working. On the same day, the airline’s Delhi-Dubai flight was diverted to Karachi due to a malfunctioning fuel indicator and its Kandla-Mumbai flight did a priority landing in Mumbai after cracks developed on its windshield mid-air.
On the query over safety being a concern for fliers, the survey received 15,184 responses. “In response, 42% said that they were concerned while 35% said they were only concerned if they were undertaking travel via a select few airline. Also, 16% of respondents said that they were not concerned at all while 7% did not have an opinion. On an aggregate basis, 77% of the respondents admitted to being concerned about safety,” the survey said.
On the question of what the fliers thought are the key root causes for several safety incidents, 46% of the respondents attributed them to the financial crunch being faced by some of the airlines, leading to an inadequate maintenance, while 18% blamed the regulator for “ineffective oversight”.
“Weak internal and/or external safety audit systems were attributed by 15% of the respondents for the rising air safety concerns. Meanwhile, 5% of the respondents said it was due to the lack of technical know-how and 10% attributed it to poor management of assets and resources,” the survey said. On an aggregate basis, 46% of the respondents felt it was financial situation that was behind such safety lapses.
LocalCircles received over 45,000 responses from more than 21,000 citizens located across 302 districts of India for the survey. Among the respondents, 43% were from metro or tier-1 districts, 35% from tier-2 districts and 22% from tier-3, 4 and rural districts.