Over 24k snags reported by major airlines in 2017: Jayant Sinha

New Delhi, [India] Mar 14 (ANI): Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha on Wednesday told the Rajya Sabha that a total of 24,791 defects/ snags were reported by various airlines in 2017 in connection with the recent grounding of 11 Airbus 320 neo aircraft.

Out of the 11 grounded planes, eight belonged to Indigo Airlines and three to Wadia group's Go Air.

Jayant Sinha mentioned the number of snags reported by major airline companies, which are as follows:

- Jet Airways: 9,689 snags

-SpiceJet: 4,903 snags

-Air India: 4,563 snags

-Go Air: 1,888 snags

-Air Asia: 1,367 snags

-Vistara: 1,225 snags

-Blue Dart: 793 snags

-IndiGo: 340 snags

IndiGo has the biggest fleet among Indian carriers of over 150 planes, which reported the lowest number of defects. Which means per plane the snags reported were three lesser in a year.

As compared, Blue Dart, which has only 6 planes, reported 793 defects.

Vistara and AirAsia India whose fleet size is not even 1/10th of IndiGo's reported thousand plus defects.

All of Vistara's A320s are brand new planes and the airline reports more defects than IndiGo which has older planes.

On March 12, as many as 47 flights were cancelled by Indigo as eight of their Airbus A320s with the PW1100 engines were grounded after a DGCA directive following recurrent occurrences of aborted take-offs and in-flight shutdowns (IFSD).

On March 11, a Lucknow bound Indigo flight from the Sardar Vallabhai Patel Airport in Ahmedabad, with 186 passengers on board, had to return and make an emergency landing because of an engine failure. The airport director reassured that all passengers were safe. (ANI)