The information presented by Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in a written response to the Lok Sabha indicates that a total of 164 aircraft are currently grounded at 15 airports across the country. These airports include Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Cochin, Delhi, Goa (Mopa), Hyderabad, Jaipur, Juhu, Kolkata, Kannur, Mumbai, Nagpur, and Raipur.
Among these, Delhi airport has the highest number of grounded aircraft, totaling 64, followed by Bengaluru with 27, Mumbai with 24, and Chennai with 20. The affected airlines include IndiGo, SpiceJet, Go First, Air India, Zoom Air, and Alliance Air.
At Delhi airport, IndiGo and Go First account for the majority of idle planes, with 24 and 23 respectively. Other carriers with grounded aircraft at this airport include SpiceJet (6), Air India (2), Zoom Air (5), Jet Airways (3), and Alliance Air (1).
In Bengaluru, 17 planes from IndiGo, nine from Go First, and one from SpiceJet are currently grounded. Meanwhile, in Mumbai, nine planes from Go First, six from Jet Airways, and others from Air India, General Aviation, and SpiceJet are inactive.
A total of 29 aircraft are grounded at airports owned and managed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia mentioned that AAI regularly follows up with airlines for the disposal of their idle aircraft and holds security deposits/bank guarantees amounting to around Rs 730 crore against these grounded planes.
Regarding the issue of grounded aircraft, Minister Scindia noted that the root cause for 95% of the grounded planes in India is related to engine supplier Pratt & Whitney (P&W), citing supply chain issues. The government has been in direct contact with P&W to address this matter.
In a separate response, Minister of State for Civil Aviation V K Singh mentioned that AAI is implementing big data-based security appliance systems, utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to predict and analyze cyber threats. The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) has also developed a Cyber Crisis Management Plan (CCMP) to deal with cyber incidents and responses to counter cyber attacks and terrorism in the aviation sector. BCAS has issued guidelines on protecting sensitive data in the aviation sector from cyber attacks to address identified vulnerabilities and ensure mitigating measures.
