SpiceJet's 186 flight slots withdrawn, asked to clear salary dues in 10 days
New Delhi: After reviewing operations of budget airline SpiceJet, aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has withdrawn 186 of its slots and asked it to clear salary dues of all its employees in the next ten days.
DGCA chief Prabhat Kumar took a series of decisions on Friday, including asking the airline to file a "convincing schedule" by December 15 to clear its over Rs 1,500 crore dues to various vendors, including airports and oil companies, official sources said.
The regulator has also directed the airline not to take bookings of flights over one month and refund the booking amount to the customers of cancelled flights in 30 days.
As many as 93 arrival and 93 departure slots were withdrawn by DGCA as the low-cost carrier was operating 232 flights in October, instead of 339 in September, the sources said.
The regulator would now on also carry out "heightened" surveillance of all SpiceJet flights on landing to ensure that safety is not compromised due to its financial troubles, they said.
The measures came a day after Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said troubled SpiceJet was seeming to "give us heart attacks".
"We are running through a lot of turbulent weather...not only the public sector, private sector is also crashing. (With) Kingfisher crashing and, right now, SpiceJet seems to be giving us heart attacks as far as airlines are concerned," Raju had said.
Asking the airline to clear salary dues of all its staffers by December 15, the regulator directed it to disburse the salaries now on by the 7th of every month.
