Govt says 164 planes lying idle at 15 airports

New Delhi: As many as 164 planes are lying idle at 15 airports in the country, the government said on Thursday.

Out of the total, the highest number of grounded aircraft is at Delhi airport at 64, followed by Bengaluru (27), Mumbai (24) and Chennai (20).

As per data shared by civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in a written reply to Lok Sabha, 164 aircraft are lying idle at 15 airports.

The airports are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Cochin, Delhi, Goa (Mopa), Hyderabad, Jaipur, Juhu, Kolkata, Kannur, Mumbai, Nagpur and Raipur.

The grounded aircraft include those of IndiGo, SpiceJet, Go First, Air India, Zoom Air and Alliance Air.

At the Delhi airport, IndiGo's 24 aircraft and Go First's 23 planes are lying idle. Other carriers whose planes are grounded there are SpiceJet (6), Air India (2), Zoom Air (5), Jet Airways (3) and Alliance Air (1).

According to the data, 17 planes of IndiGo, nine aircraft of Go First and one plane of SpiceJet are lying idle at the Bengaluru airport.

In Mumbai, nine planes of Go First and six aircraft of Jet Airways are lying idle. Other airlines having grounded aircraft at the airport there are Air India (4), General Aviation (4) and SpiceJet (1).

A total of 29 aeroplanes are lying idle at the airports owned and managed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI).

"AAI follows up with the airlines regularly for disposal of their idle aircraft. AAI has a security deposit/ bank guarantee of around Rs 730 crore against these aircraft," Scindia said.

While responding to a supplementary question in the Lok Sabha, Scindia said the problem is that 95 per cent of the aircraft on ground in India today is because of engine supplier Pratt & Whitney (P&W).

The reason is that they are having supply chain issues. "We have been in direct touch with P&W," he said.

In a separate written reply, Minister of State for Civil Aviation V K Singh said AAI is implementing big data-based security appliance systems for protection against cyber attacks using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to predict and analyse cyber threats.

The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) has also prepared Cyber Crisis Management Plan (CCMP) which deals with scenarios of cyber incidents and responses to be undertaken for countering cyber attacks and cyber terrorism.

"To address identified vulnerabilities and ensure mitigating measures, BCAS has issued guidelines on the subject 'Guidelines for Protection of sensitive data in the aviation sector of India' which covers the subject 'protection from cyber-attack'," he added.