DGCA won’t ground A320 Neos over engines glitches
33.43 per cent to 16,84,066 units compared to 12,62,140 units in the yearago month.
Mr Mathur said this reflected the overall strong demand for motorcycles and scooters in rural as well as urban markets. Motorcycle sales last month jumped by 28.64 per cent to 10,54,062 units compared to January 2017.
Hero MotoCorp posted a growth of 24.39 per cent in its domestic motorcycle sales at 5,43,325 units as against 4,36,771 units in the year-ago month. Honda Scooter and Motorcycle sold 1,69,537 units as compared to 1,39,161 units in the same month last year. — PTI Mumbai, Feb. 12: The aviation regulator DGCA has ruled out grounding the Pratt & Whitney-powered Airbus A320Neo fleet despite the recurring serious safety issues with the faulty new engines.
Budget carrier IndiGo, which is the largest operator of these planes in the country, and GoAir being the other one, have already grounded three such planes following an emergency airworthiness directive from the European Aviation Safety Agency (Easa) on this issue.
“No (there is no such plan),” was the response of director-general of civil aviation B.S. Bhullar in response to a query, seeking to know whether there was any move on the part of the regulator to ground the entire Pratt & Whitney-powered Airbus A320 Neo planes.
It can be noted that this is in sharp contrast to the stance taken by the regulator during the UPA government when Air India’s Boeing 787 Dreamliners faced battery fire issues prompting DGCA to order grounding of all B-787s shortly after an order by the US Federal Aviation Administration.
“Certainly, we will not fly the Dreamliners until the FAA and our DGCA give clearance,” then aviation minister Ajit Singh had said on the grounding of these planes.
Significantly, last time also, despite IndiGo reportedly facing 69 Neo engine (earlier ones) failures between March 2016 and September 2017 and GoAir too reporting a good number of in-flight disruptions due to the engine woes, the DGCA did not take any tough stand. — PTI