India’s Aviation Regulator – Directorate General of Civil Aviation – has grounded 90 SpiceJet pilots from flying its Boeing 737MAX aircraft after finding problems with the full flight simulator simulator they’d trained on.

A routine check of the simulator revealed deficiencies, and an investigation is underway to discover what caused them shared Arun Kumar, chief of India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation. Specifically the regulator found glitches with the flight controls and a strick shaker, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Boeing owned full flight simulator is located in New Delhi and was deployed last year to provide training infrastructure for both SpiceJet (155 B737MAX ordered) and the new airline Akasa Air (72 B737MAX ordered).

SpiceJet currently operates 11 B737MAX aircraft and has 560 pilots type rated to fly those aircraft – more than enough to not affect SpiceJet’s operation of the aircraft. The 90 pilots will continue to fly the B737NG aircraft  of which it operates 53.

“We have barred these pilots from flying Max and they have to retrain successfully,” Kumar said. “We will take strict action against those found responsible for the lapse.”

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