Vistara Pays Rs 70 Lakh Fine “Under Protest” Over Route Dispersal Guidelines
New Delhi:
Aviation regulator DGCA fined Vistara 70 lakh for failing to comply with the Route Dispersal Guidelines last year, and the full service carrier paid the fine “in protest”.
The airline also said it has been in full compliance with the Distributed Route Guidelines (RDG) for the past few years and that it failed to comply in just one flight.
According to RDG, airlines must operate certain flights to underserved areas, including the Northeast.
A senior DGCA official said Vistara was fined Rs 700,000 for not complying with the RDG last October.
In a detailed statement, Vistara said also by April 2022 it was ready to roll out significantly more than the minimum ASKM (Available Seating Kilometers) requirement for each category, which would lead to to 1.22% of flights on CAT IIA routes compared to 1 percent claim.
“However, some flights had to be canceled due to the closure of Bagdogra airport, resulting in the required number of flights in April 2022 being only 0.01% short (only one flight was missing).
“In addition, under the New Civil Aviation Policy 2016 effective from the 2017-18 Northern Winter, ASKM trading has also been discontinued, which has limited the options available to airlines to make any last-minute adjustments in such cases,” it said.
Furthermore, Vistara said it “paid a fine to protest”.
“We also confirmed to have deployed capacity beyond RDG requirements since then, as we have done in the past,” it added.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
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