Visakhapatnam, March 26: Amid escalating issues of technical glitches and related flight cancellations, another incident came to light on Monday. A SpiceJet flight for Hyderabad turned to Visakhapatnam airport in Andhra Pradesh after 30 mins of taking off. As per reports, the flight from Visakhapatnam to Hyderabad had a minor air conditioning issue. As per tweets by ANI, all crew members and passengers are safe.
Soon after the incident, SpiceJet spokesperson in his statement said that the flight made a normal landing and NOT an emergency landing in Visakhapatnam. He said that the defect is being rectified and the aircraft will continue with its daily rotation soon.
The incident comes a day after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath formally launched SpiceJet flight services for Delhi from the Gorakhpur Airport. Adityanath flagged off a Boeing plane of SpiceJet for Delhi, which carried 189 passengers. The 189-seater plane takes 80 minutes to reach Delhi.
A SpiceJet flight returned to the airport after 30 mins of taking off from Visakhapatnam due to some technical problem. All crew & passengers are safe #AndhraPradesh
— ANI (@ANI) March 26, 2018
Raising passenger safety concerns, market leader IndiGo reported as many as five technical glitches, while SpiceJet and Jet Airways reported three each and flag carrier Air India saw two. These incidents led to the grounding of one aircraft each by IndiGo, Jet, and SpiceJet, an ET report stated.
On March 15, SpiceJet had announced shifting 22 flights to T2 with destinations to seven cities from March 25. Earlier this month, budget carrier IndiGo announced that it will partially shift operations from Terminal 1 to the revamped Terminal 2 (T2) of the IGI airport here from March 25, after losing a court battle on the issue.
As per the recent order of the Supreme Court, both IndiGo and SpiceJet had submitted lists of sectors to GMR-led Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) for shifting to T2 and the DIAL has given its consent to the proposal, a statement issued. With the partial shift of operations of SpiceJet and IndiGo to T2, passenger area for the Flyers will increase from 25,917 sqm at T1 to combined 62,010 sqm. T2 adds additional 36,093 sqm passenger area.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 26, 2018 09:20 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).