After the Boeing 737 MAX jetliner remained grounded for more than 2 years, Spicejet is bringing it back. The aircraft was grounded after the world witnessed two deadly crashes involving the same aircraft (Lion Airways 2018 and Ethiopia 2019). Director-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Monday gave a green nod to SpiceJet Airways to fly the Boeing MAX 737 aircraft.
Since then, it has “‘gone through the greatest scrutiny of any aircraft in history” and is today ”the safest aircraft in the world,” said Ajay Singh, the Chairman and Managing Director of SpiceJet, which has recommenced flights using the aircraft. He told ANI, “The regulators from worldwide especially the United States, Europe and India had scrutinized multiple times and have finally given us the nod for commercial operations. We are ready to take off our flight for commercial passengers use.”
To restore people’s faith in respective model of aircraft, Union Minister of Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia has announced that he will board the first flight upon resumption, along with the SpiceJet owners, who will board the flight with their families. The Union Minister will fly on the plane from Delhi to Gwalior.
“SpiceJet started to fly this aircraft two days ago. And so far, with all the flights that we have flown, there’s not even been a minor issue,” Singh said. “It’s incredibly important to have a fuel-efficient aircraft. The MAX is 20% more fuel-efficient than our older aircraft, the Boeing 737-NG,” he said further.
It is worth mentioning that SpiceJet currently operates 13 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, with 205 more on order, with deliveries beginning in December, according to the firm. The overall worth of the deal is $22 billion and the airline expects supply of the aircraft to resume from December as it ramps up its operations at a time when domestic aviation is rapidly picking up the pace to pre-Covid levels.
SpiceJet has suffered a loss of crores due to the halt on operations of the Max aircraft, for which it has requested reimbursement from Boeing.
In addition to greater fuel efficiency, the aircraft offers a revamped experience for budget travellers as legroom is greater than in legacy variants of the Boeing 737 and streaming broadband services will also be available from next month onwards.
“To start with it, it’s going to be free, we are going to make sure that people are able to access the net fully and properly, in broadband mode. We probably won’t allow calls to be made, because that will be disturbing for other passengers. But pretty much everything else,” the SpiceJet Chairman added.
Apart from hospitality and tourism, the civil aviation sector has been another one of the worst-affected sectors in the Indian economy during the Covid period. With flight operations rwemaining suspended for months, the financial health of all airlines in India has been massively affected. With massive cost-cutting to keep companies alive, several employees in the industry have staged protests regarding pay cuts and job losses.
Low-cost carrier SpiceJet has also seen protests among its ground personnel in New Delhi over unpaid salary dues. Talking in this regard, Spicejet chairman said, “Firstly, all the salary cuts have been restored. All the employees have been paid in full for the last two or three months. We had a choice of either retrenching a lot of people or saying okay, you know, we have a certain amount of money that we get from our charter revenue and from cargo and so on and so forth. And we will distribute this money so we will not retrench anybody.”
Earlier this month, Spicejet announced that it has entered into a settlement agreement with Boeing wherein Boeing has agreed to provide certain accommodations and settle the outstanding claims related to the grounding of 737 MAX aircraft and its return to service.
“This paves the way for the induction of efficient and younger MAX aircraft into the Company’s fleet and ensures the resumption of new aircraft deliveries from our order of 155 MAX aircraft,” the carrier said.
