New Delhi: A SpiceJet aircraft on Thursday had to abort its take-off on a Mumbai runway following a caution alert, however, there was no safety scare, news agency PTI reported. According to the report, a SpiceJet Q400 aircraft that was scheduled to operate from financial capital Mumbai to Kandla in western state of Gujarat, aborted take off “owing to illumination of a caution alert,” the airline said.
“The aircraft stopped well within the runway length available. Crew acted as per the SOP. There was no safety scare,” the statement further added.
This is at least the ninth incident of technical malfunction on a SpiceJet aircraft in the last 40 days.
This comes just a day after the aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Wednesday ordered SpiceJet to operate a maximum of 50 per cent of its flights for eight weeks after several of its planes reported technical malfunction recently. In these eight weeks, the budget carrier will be subjected to “enhanced surveillance” by the DGCA.
However, the airline said that there has been no flight cancellations because of the regulator’s order as it is already operating limited services ”due to the current lean travel season”.
Earlier, on July 5, a SpiceJet freighter aircraft that was heading to Chongqing in China, returned to Kolkata after the pilots realised after the take-off that its weather radar was not working.
Meanwhile, 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 priority landing in Mumbai after cracks developed on its windshield mid-air.