The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has fined Vistara a penalty of INR 7 million for not operating the minimum number of mandated flights to underserved areas of the country’s northeast region.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation had fined the airline in October 2022 for not complying with the rules in April 2022. The airline paid the fine this month, sources confirmed.
Director general Arun Kumar confirmed the development but declined to comment further on the issue.
Vistara could not operate one flight from Bagdogra due to which a record-breaking fine was imposed on the airline. The underserved routes served by Vistara are - Srinagar-Jammu- Srinagar, Bagdogra-Dibrugarh- Bagdogra and Dibrugarh-Guwahati-Dibrugarh.
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%. 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 airline said.