BackOpinion | Don’t let the fear of flying stage a return
With so many aircraft snags being reported, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation should make it clear that safety is its top priority—for the sake of consumer confidence
PremiumUnease over flying used to be a thing of the past. However, there are incipient signs of a revival of that feeling, what with reports of aircraft snags surfacing a little too frequently for comfort. Suspicions have arisen that Indian flyers are being ferried on aircraft equipped with engines that may not be in perfect shape, going by the glitches that have lately been reported. Aware of the problem, airlines are working with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the aviation regulator, to find ways to fix it without having to ground a large section of the country’s fleet of commercial aircraft. The DGCA has set a deadline, beyond which IndiGo and GoAir will not be allowed to fly their Airbus A320neo aircraft powered by Pratt & Whitney (P&W) engines, unless these are re-equipped with suitably modified components. Budget airline IndiGo is among the biggest clients of Airbus’s A320neo narrow-bodied jets, many of them fitted with these P&W engines that offer the advantage of superior fuel efficiency but have given trouble off and on since they entered service about three years ago. P&W has reportedly addressed some of the original set of complaints, but pilots are still reporting cases of engine vibrations. While most flyers may not know what exactly is going on, it would serve the market well if their equanimity is not taken for granted. Word has begun to spread. If stricter action needs to be taken in the interest of passenger safety, it should be taken forthwith.
It remains unclear if concerns over keeping the market’s capacity intact and fares in control have outweighed the need to keep planes deemed vulnerable to snags out of operation. The DGCA had directed the airlines in question to replace all unmodified P&W engines in their A320neo fleets, setting out a schedule for this to be done. Since new aircraft had been ordered, the regulator also decided that one trouble-prone A320neo would be grounded for each new plane that was inducted. India’s largest airline IndiGo has ordered new engines for its planes, but their delivery schedule is unlikely to see it over this hump. In the event that it is unable to meet its 31 January 2020 deadline set by the DGCA, air passengers would probably see a dip in the number of flight seats on offer. Ticket prices may rise.
No doubt, fare inflation would be unpopular, but the DGCA’s buy-one-ground-one approach suggests that this consideration has been given extra weight in its decisions. The regulator should come clean on whether it has made an appropriate assessment of the risk entailed by having engines in service that are marked out for replacement. Market libertarians may want to argue that decommissioning these jets would amount to regulatory excess, as market players know better than regulators what’s good for their customers, reputation, and business. Advocates of non-intervention, however, tend to overlook the fact that civil aviation is not a classic free market. It is a licensed business, with the number of airlines limited to what the aviation infrastructure can effectively bear. This also means that the self-regulatory effect of free market competition is imperfect. As with any other arena with state-imposed entry barriers, tight regulation is necessary. On matters of customer safety, this is all the more so.
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