NEW DELHI: SpiceJet’s claim that the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), a UN body, conducted an exhaustive audit of the airline and that its “operations, safety processes and systems have been found to be in order” has been downright rejected by the ICAO.
The ICAO is a specialized agency of the United Nations to promote the safe and orderly development of international civil aviation around the world. SpiceJet earlier this month had said that it was the only scheduled Indian airline part of the audit conducted by ICAO under the Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP) Continuous Monitoring Approach.
In a Twitter post titled "Clarifications regarding ICAO mission to India" on Tuesday, ICAO's communication officer William Raillant-Clark clarified that it visits various airlines when it conducts an audit of a country's aviation safety oversight system and that visits to operators are not audits or inspections.
“The ICAO’s Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP) team performed an ICAO Coordinated Validation Mission (ICVM) in India from 9 to 16 November 2022. The objective of an ICVM is to validate progress in addressing the findings from previous USOAP activities,” the ICAO said in its clarification note.
“As part of an ICVM, the ICAO teams conduct industry visits to verify the effectiveness of the civil aviation authority’s safety oversight. This will include visits to multiple operators. The ICAO wishes to clarify that visits to operators are not audits or inspections at all,” the note added.
On December 5, Ajay Singh, Chairman and Managing Director of SpiceJet 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." He added that SpiceJet was truly humbled on making it to the top 50 nations in terms of ICAO aviation safety audit scores.
Following this, SpiceJet's shares gained over 6 per cent on December 6 to close at Rs 42.15 on the BSE.
On December 2, a SpiceJet flight from Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) bound for Kozhikode with 197 passengers, including six crew members, onboard had an emergency landing at the Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL) following hydraulic failure.
SpiceJet was until recently under the Directorate General of Civil Aviation's scanner following a number of technical glitches on its flights mid-air. The aviation regulator had previously capped its flight departures and gave a slew of instructions in the wake of an emergency landing in Hyderabad around mid-October following the detection of smoke inside the cabin.