Aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Friday issued a show-cause notice to executives of top private carrier IndiGo over safety-related lapses.
The regulator carried out surveillance on the airline and found it had not taken corrective steps in the area of training. The safety action group (SAG) was also not in the training department as required by aviation rules.
"The corrective action actions taken are inconsistent and not commensurate with the severity of the FOQA (Flight Operations Quality Assurance) events," DGCA Director (air safety) Maneesh Kumar said in the notice to IndiGo's Head of Training Sanjiv Bhalla.
The DGCA audit focussed on the area of occurrence reporting, FOQA monitoring and analysis, implementation of Safety Management System, aircrew training, flight operations and airworthiness.
The show-cause notice has also been sent to senior airline executives Rakesh Srivastava, Ashim Mitra and Hemant Kumar.
The DGCA has asked the four airline executives why action should not be taken against them in view of the lapses and violation of the regulatory requirements. It has given 15 days' time to the executives to respond.
Meanwhile, InterGlobe Enterprises (IGE), a promoter of IndiGo, on Friday said that Rakesh Gangwal's allegations of "collapsing" corporate governance in the airline are baseless.
"Corporate governance is not about levelling baseless charges. It is about ensuring that the company's interests as also those of other stakeholders are protected and not harmed," IGE said in a statement.
IGE said that Gangwal fails to cite a single concrete example where any act or omission has resulted in any loss or damage to IndiGo.
Recently, the crisis at the country's largest private carrier IndiGo deepened with the dispute between the promoters of the airline turning ugly.
The differences had been earlier been presumed to be a minor one by many industry experts, but it now transpires that it has snowballed into a full-blown war.
Airline co-promoter and former US Airways Chief Executive and Chairman Rakesh Gangwal, who has so far remained behind the scenes, has gone on record to lodge his grievances against various issues pertaining to IndiGo. So much so that he has sought regulatory intervention from market regulator SEBI to resolve the issues.