Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol has informed the Lok Sabha that cases of technical faults have been reported in the planes of many airlines of the country. An analysis conducted by the government found that 377 out of 754 aircraft were found to have repeated technical problems since January last year. In this, the highest number of cases have been seen in the aircraft of Air India Group, where some problem or the other has been found in about 75 percent of the fleet.
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Data from Air India and other airlines
According to data tabled in Parliament, 191 of the total 267 aircraft of Air India Group have been reported to have repeated technical problems. This includes 137 out of 166 aircraft of main Air India, while problems were found in 54 out of 101 aircraft of Air India Express. An Air India spokesperson has said that the airline has made its inspection process very strict, due to which even small deficiencies are coming on record.
The government has also shared information about other airlines:
IndiGo: Defects were found in 148 out of 405 aircraft.
SpiceJet: Problems occurred in 16 out of 43 aircraft.
Akasa Air: Problems were reported on 14 out of 32 aircraft.
DGCA action and security arrangements
The minister said that the total cases of technical glitches have reduced in the last three years and in 2024, 421 such cases were registered. Keeping safety in mind, DGCA has completed 146 maintenance audits of airlines till July this year. This included 54 audits of IndiGo and 33 of Air India.
To improve the functioning of the department, the number of technical posts has been increased from 637 to 1,063. However, a total of 2,645 posts are still vacant in Airport Authority (AAI) and Aviation Regulators. DGCA has recently taken a tough stance on the safety deficiencies in Air India’s operations and has given instructions to rectify them.