Airline safety on radar, who’s failing the passengers?

New Delhi: Tuesday, July 05, 2022 was not a good day for SpiceJet and its passengers. The airline reported 2 mishaps in under 24 hours of each other on 2 separate flights. The first on a Dubai to Delhi flight which had to make an unscheduled landing at Pakistan's Karachi, of all the places. And just a few hours later, the airline reported a cracked outer windshield on a Kandla to Mumbai flight. Thankfully the flight made a safe landing at Mumbai airport.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation is probing the unscheduled launch incident and its eye will likely also be on the cracked windshield. The focus is once again back on the airline sector.

In fact, the focus on the airline sector has been almost constant over the past couple of years. Ever since the pandemic and even before, the sector has been under the spotlight and usually for all the wrong reasons.

SpiceJet has had a series of mishaps in just this year. To be exact, seven since just May this year. SpiceJet has responded to the unscheduled landing incident saying, "On July 5, 2022, SpiceJet B737 aircraft operating flight SG-11 (Delhi - Dubai) was diverted to Karachi due to an indicator light malfunctioning. The aircraft landed safely at Karachi and passengers were safely disembarked. No emergency was declared and the aircraft made a normal landing. There was no earlier report of any malfunction with the aircraft."

However, it's not just SpiceJet that has had a bad performance. The aircraft that was central to today's landing in Karachi too has been in the limelight for all the wrong reasons. According to reports we collated; the Boeing 737 aircraft has been in over 74 incidents since 2000. The aircraft was grounded for almost 20 months between March 2019 to December 2020. This is after 346 people lost their lives in 2 separate, horrific crashes. But, since its return to service, the aircraft has reported 22 incidents just in the U.S

We caught up with Mark D Martin, a Member of the Royal Aviation Society and the Founder & CEO of Martin Consulting to get his views on the crisis. He says, "All these collectively (the issues) point to the question that who on earth is in charge?...There is a lot of aspects that have to be really focused on the internal functioning of the airlines themselves...SpiceJet has got a major PR crisis on their hands."