NEW DELHI: As many as 12 Boeing 737 MAX belonging to SpiceJet were grounded on Wednesday and the aircraft's overflying banned in India amid global backlash following the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines flight last week.

The low cost carrier is expected to cancel at least 35 of its daily 520 flights from Thursday till it can make an alternate arrangement.

The development may lead to a sharp hike in airfares since it comes in the wake of Jet Airways grounding several aircraft due to non-payment of dues and IndiGo cancelling flights on a regular basis.

SpiceJet has as many as 205 B737 MAX on order and it will not take further deliveries of the plane till the safety concerns are sorted out, say officials.

Since the aircraft is barred from overflying a large number of countries , the delivery flight from the US to India will become virtually impossible till everyone removes these restrictions.

Directorate General of Civil Aviation chief B S Bhullar said India had shared with US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Boeing the interim safety measures it had taken for the B737 MAX after Sunday’s crash.

“The responses we received from them were generic and general. The specific issues we raised were not addressed. So we decided to ground the aircraft. Robust regulators over the world also felt there are safety concerns (with MAX) as of now,” Bhullar said.

He said that India did not feel confident about keeping the plane in operation based on the communication received by the watchdog from Boeing.

Following a meeting with DGCA chief B S Bhullar and officials from airlines on Wednesday afternoon, aviation secretary P S Kharola admitted on Thursday that the situation will be "challenging" in the coming days.

The aviation officials have asked airlines not to cash in on the situation by arbitrarily hiking fares as the cost of operation has not gone up.

“SpiceJet has been asked to adjust its schedule in such a way that it does not cancel operations to cities with single flight schedule and instead reduce the frequency to cities with multiple flight schedules,” said Kharola.

The government will facilitate wet leasing of planes for a short period to help airlines such as SpiceJet.

While grounding of 12 planes could affect over 60-70 daily flights, SpiceJet is planning to increase utilisation of the earlier generation B737 and Bombardier Q400 and do route rationalisation to minimise cancellations.

“We are evaluating options for augmenting capacity in the coming days through aircraft inductions. A majority of passengers affected as a result of these cancellations have been accommodated on alternate flights. Additionally, the airline is also offering passengers option of a full refund, changing the flight/date of travel, or even change of destination (to nearest alternate airport); all this without any cancellation charges or any fare difference,” a SpiceJet statement said.

But spot airfares, which were already high, have started to climb up.

Travel portal Yatra COO Sharat Dhall said: “At least 50 planes are out of action or grounded on the domestic front owing to multiple reasons leading to a significant reduction in domestic airline capacity. The additional capacity coming in is not likely to cover this in the short term, while demand is going to be robust over the next few months because school holidays and surging leisure travel. Shortage of planes is expected to push airfares north in the short term. Airfares were at least 15% higher this year compared to last year, and owing to the current situation, airfares are expected to rise further this season.”

Aloke Bajpai, CEO and co-founder of ixigo, said: “Grounding of additional planes will further impact fares which were already high this season. Both domestic and international fares for flights to and from Mumbai and Delhi have seen an average increase of 40-50% and we expect fares to rise further due to shortage of planes."



In Video: India grounds Boeing 737-MAX planes