Vistara airlines has paid a record penalty of ₹70 lakh imposed by India’s civil aviation regulator for not operating the minimum number of mandated flights to underserved areas of the country’s northeast, officials said.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had in October last yearfined the full-service carrier for not complying with the rules in April. “The airline paid the fine this month,” an official said, seeking anonymity.
Director general Arun Kumar confirmed the development but declined to comment further on the issue.
“As a law-abiding organisation and in compliance with the order, Vistara has paid the penalty under protest,” a Vistara spokesperson told HT on Friday. “We also confirm to have deployed capacity in excess to the RDG (route dispersal guidelines) requirement since then, as we had been doing in the past.”
Vistara’s available seat kilometres (ASKM) for April 2022 was found to be 0.99%, lower than the requirement of 1% on northeastern routes as mandated by the civil aviation ministry.
“We have been consistently deploying more than the requisite ASKMs in the various categories, as prescribed in the RDG rule. For April 2022 also, we were poised to deploy significantly more than the minimum required ASKM per category, which would have resulted in 1.22% flights on CAT IIA routes against the requirement of 1%,” the airline said. “However, some flights had to be cancelled due to the closure of Bagdogra airport, leading to a shortfall of just 0.01% in the required number of flights in April 2022.”
The matter was highlighted in October last year, after which the airline had submitted a reply, a second official said. “Their reply, however, was not found to be satisfactory by the DGCA even in their appeal,” the official said, declining to be named.
Flights connecting to airports in the northeast, including Bagdogra in West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Andaman & Nicobar and Lakshadweep, constitute the category II routes, and flights within these areas are classified as category IIA.
“Vistara had previously defaulted in the requirement of ASKM deployment in CAT IIA routes of route dispersal guidelines in November and December 2017 and in January 2018,” the second official said, adding that no penalty was imposed then, as there was no provision of levying penalty before May 2021.
