New Delhi: The Minister for Civil Aviation Suresh Prabhu today directed Secretary and senior officials of DGCA to take stock of grounding of planes by Jet Airways, Advance Bookings, Cancellations, Refund and Safety issues.

As per the direction of Minister, DGCA reviewed the performance of Jet Airways on Operational, Airworthiness & Passenger facilitation today. Current availability of aircraft in the fleet for operation is 41 and accordingly scheduled for 603 domestic flights and 382 international flights has been drawn. However, it is a dynamic situation and there may be further attrition in coming weeks.

DGCA instructed the airline to comply with the relevant provisions of the applicable CARs for facilitation of Passengers regarding timely communication, compensation, refunds and providing alternate flights wherever applicable. The data is being monitored by DGCA on regular basis.

DGCA is ensuring that all aircraft in the fleet whether in operation or on ground are maintained in accordance with Approved Maintenance Programme (AMP).

The operator was also directed to ensure that no Pilots/Cabin Crew/AMEs be rostered on duty who had reported stress of any nature. Additionally, all such staff should be current with all mandatory training requirements.

Prabhu has directed all the concerned officials to continuously monitor overall situation. He has also directed them to safeguard the public interest, to give paramount importance to public safety and to take necessary steps for passenger convenience. He instructed DGCA to:

• maintain airworthiness of aircraft being used in schedule,

• avoid last minute cancellation or change in schedule so as to minimize passenger inconvenience, and

• ensure that affected passengers are duly adjusted/refunded as per the relevant regulations.

DeshGujarat