The Vistara Airlines was fined with Rs 70 lakhs by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in October last year for not operating the minimum number of mandated flights to underserved areas of the country’s northeast. The airline authority had fined the full-service carrier for not complying with the rules in April. “The airline paid the fine this month,” an official said.
“As a law-abiding organisation and in compliance with the order, Vistara has paid the penalty under protest,” an airline spokesperson told Hindustan Times on Friday. “We also confirm to have deployed capacity in excess to the RDG (route dispersal guidelines) requirement since then, as we did in the past,” he further said.
According to reports, Vistara could not operate one flight from Bagdogra due to which a record-breaking fine was imposed on the airline.
Vistara’s mandated requirement for available seat kilometres (ASKM) for April 2022 was supposed to be 1% on northeastern routes as mandated by the civil aviation ministry. However, it was found to be 0.99%.
“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.
The airline clarified that some flights had to be cancelled due to the closure of the Bagdogra airport, leading to a shortfall of just 0.01% in the required number of flights in April 2022.
The CAT IIA routes served by Vistara under RDGs are – Srinagar-Jammu- Srinagar, Bagdogra-Dibrugarh- Bagdogra and Dibrugarh-Guwahati-Dibrugarh.
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