For the second time in three months, the country’s sole seaplane has been flown back to the Maldives for “scheduled maintenance”, following which seaplane operations were suspended from Wednesday.
According to sources in the know of the matter, the 19-seater Twin Otter 300 seaplane – property of a Maldivian company – took off from Ahmedabad to land in Goa on Tuesday.
“After staying in Goa overnight, it took-off for Cochin on Wednesday to reach the Maldives by the afternoon,” said an official from the Directorate General Civil Aviation (DGCA) on condition of anonymity.
SpiceJet spokesperson confirmed the development and said, “Seaplane operations will be suspended for three days starting today (Wednesday) as the aircraft is going to the Maldives for scheduled maintenance today. The aircraft will return on February 5 and operations will resume on February 6, 2021. While a facility for day-to-day maintenance has been set up in India, one for larger maintenance is in the work.”
The seaplane service between Kevadia and Sabarmati riverfront (Ahmedabad) – was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhai Patel on October 31 – to attract tourists to the Statue of Unity. It was then temporarily suspended within a month. After re-commencing operations on December 30, 2020, the airline said no flights operated on three days – January 9 due to bad weather, and January 14 and 15 given the kite flying festival.
An aviation safety expert who did not wish to be named said, “Aircraft do not go for maintenance twice with barely two months of its flying. This means that they did not get the paperwork done as required.”
Last week, HT had reported that seaplane services were unable to attract passengers as expected.
According to sources, it is flying with around 50% capacity. The airline, however, maintained that their flights to Kevadia are clocking an average load of over 90%.
The seaplane, under the government’s Udey Desh ka Aam Naagrik (UDAN) project, is operated by Spice Shuttle, a fully-owned subsidiary of SpiceJet, which wet-leased the seaplane from Maldives Island Aviation Services (MIAS). MIAS is owned by the Maldives government, making both the aircraft and its crew the property of a foreign entity.
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