International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has refuted SpiceJet’s claims saying that it never conducted an audit on any airline in India.
William Raillant-Clark, Communications officer, ICAO said: “ICAO wishes to clarify that visits to operators are not audits or inspections at all.”
This clarification by ICAO comes days after the budget carrier claimed that SpiceJet was the only scheduled Indian airline part of the audit conducted by ICAO under the Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP) Continuous Monitoring Approach. The audit of SpiceJet safety systems helped India achieve its highest-ever safety ranking in the ICAO audit, the airline said in a release.
The airline also claimed: "On 14 November 2022, the ICAO Auditing Committee visited the SpiceJet Head Office, from where all SpiceJet flights are controlled, and the SpiceJet flight dispatch offices at Delhi Airport. They audited and reviewed the various flight critical functions and operational areas such as flight planning, weather assessment, route planning, aircraft serviceability, operations to critical airports, pilot rostering systems, cabin safety procedures, etc.
The airline press release also included the statement of Ajay Singh, Chairman and Managing Director, SpiceJet who said: "The ICAO audit is the benchmark of safety. We are proud that our safety culture, systems, processes, and operations have been found to be in order and at par with the global best practices and safety standards."
"ICAO's Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP) team performed an ICAO Coordinated Validation Mission (ICVM) to India from 9 to 16 November 2022. The objective of an ICVM is to validate progress in addressing the findings from previous USOAP activities," said William Raillant-Clark, Communications Officer, ICAO in a tweet on December 13.
Meanwhile, SpiceJet’s reactions to the latest ICAO tweet are awaited.