A Dubai-Madurai SpiceJet flight’s take off was delayed on Monday after the nose wheel of the aircraft malfunctioned, PTI reported citing the Directorate General of Civil Aviation officials.
This was at least the ninth incident of a technical malfunction in a SpiceJet plane in the last 24 days.
On July 6, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation issued a showcause notice to the airline company seeking its explanation for the “degradation of its safety margins”.
In the notice, the civil aviation authority said that since April 1, several SpiceJet aircraft had to return to their originating airport or land at the destination with degraded safety margins.
“...The review transpires that poor internal safety oversight and inadequate maintenance actions [as most of the incidents are related to either component failure or system related failure] has resulted in degradation of the safety margins,” the notice had stated.
On Monday, after the Boeing B737 Max aircraft completed a Mangaluru-Dubai trip, and was supposed to fly back to Madurai, an engineer found that its nose wheel strut was more compressed than usual, officials said, according to PTI.
SpiceJet then sent another aircraft from Mumbai to Dubai.
“Flight delays can happen with any airline,” a SpiceJet spokesperson told PTI. “There has been no incident or a safety scare on this flight.”
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