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Only 0.7% of flights cancelled this year, says aviation minister Scindia in LS
Our fleet size has doubled in the last 10 years and the number of air traffic movements per week has grown by 22% only in the last two years, Scindia said
New Delhi: Union minister of civil aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia said in the Lok Sabha on Thursday that only 0.7% of commercial flights in the country were cancelled while responding to a question raised by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MP Andimuthu Raja during the Lok Sabha question hour regarding the cancellation of flights .
“If one sees the data of cancellations in our country, due to weather it is 0.3% this year. Commercial and operational is 0.2%. And technical it is 0.2%,” Scindia said.
“Our fleet size has doubled in the last 10 years and the number of air traffic movements per week has grown by 22% only in the last two years. Even if you take all three reasons for cancellations together, it comes to 0.7% of our total air traffic movements in civil aviation across the country,” he added.
Raja questioned the Union minister about the Indigo flight incident in which passengers were seen seated on the tarmac of Mumbai airport and eating their meals there after their flight was delayed.
Scindia admitted that such instances in which passengers were inconvenienced are “unacceptable”. The government had issued guidelines regarding cancellations and delays, including a mandate that flights delayed by more than three hours be cancelled and passengers be booked onto another flight, he said.
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The Union minister noted that two elements needed to be taken care of in the event of a cancellation or a delay – airport security concerns, which were integral to the security of the nation, and the inconvenience caused to passengers.
On the IndiGo incident, Scindia said that the airline should have acknowledged the issue and radioed the airport in advance to avoid causing inconvenience to the passengers.
Scindia said that the issue had arisen due to the most severe fog conditions, but that both the airline and the airport had been fined because of the infringement on airport security and inconvenience caused to passengers.
IndiGo was fined a total of Rs.1.20 crore for various violations, while Mumbai airport operator MIAL was fined Rs.60 lakh by the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security.
A video surfaced in January showing IndiGo passengers rushing out at the Mumbai airport, sitting on the tarmac and having food as their flight was diverted. IndiGo flight 6E2195 landed at Mumbai airport due to diversion and the airline allowed the passengers to disembark from the flight onto the tarmac and then proceed to their next flight.
The ministry had then issued show cause notices to IndiGo and Mumbai Airport saying that they were not proactive in thwarting the situation which was a security threat.
IndiGo earlier said it already initiated an internal inquiry into the incident.
Scindia promised that regulations had been put in place concerning delays. He said that from now on, any flight which is delayed by more than three hours would now ‘mandatorily’ be cancelled and its passengers would be put on another flight.
The aviation minister also noted that instrument landing systems (ILS) were being implemented at 33 airports to facilitate aircraft landings at night or in bad weather, a sharp rise from this technology being available at only Indian airports in 2014.
