India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Tuesday told IndiGo it has one day to submit an updated flight schedule including a 5% cut in departures after stranding thousands of passengers by canceling over 2,000 flights this month.
What does the regulator’s order mean for IndiGo?
- India’s largest national carrier needs to cut about 115 flights per day
- The airline had already canceled more than 330 flights on Tuesday
- Indigo has apologized to the passengers and said that it will refund the tickets of the grounded passengers.
- This cut has happened when the demand for winter travel has started increasing in India.
IndiGo, which controls more than 60% of India’s domestic market, failed to follow through on its operational plan after expanding its summer flight schedule by 6%, officials said.
“The airline has not demonstrated the ability to operate these programs efficiently,” the DGCA said. “Therefore, orders have been given to reduce the program by 5% in all areas.”
DGCA asked the airline to reduce flights on routes operated by rival airlines and maintain service where IndiGo has a monopoly.
Government will encourage airline competition
Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu told Members of Parliament that safety in air travel would remain “negotiable” and “no airline will be allowed to cause such hardship to passengers through planning failures and non-compliance with statutory provisions.”
“The disruption caused by IndiGo’s operational failures is now fast stabilising,” he said. “All other airlines will continue to operate smoothly across the country.”
Naidu also said the government would “encourage more new airlines to start and operate in India.”
More than 330 IndiGo flights were canceled on Tuesday, down from 560 a day earlier. The company said later Tuesday that operations had stabilized.
“Our on-time performance… has returned to normal levels,” an IndiGo statement said. It said the airline was operating more than 1,800 flights on Tuesday and planned to “fly around 1,900 flights” on Wednesday.
IndiGo’s on-time performance – which was a strong 84% in October – dropped to as low as 35% during the peak of the crisis.
“On behalf of IndiGo, I would like to sincerely apologize for the huge inconvenience this has caused to many of our customers,” IndiGo CEO Peter Albers said on Friday.
IndiGo, which controls about 65% of India’s domestic aviation market, said it failed to adequately plan for new night flights and weekly pilot rest rules that came into effect on November 1.
Social media posts showed bags bearing security tags being piled up in the terminal areas of New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru airports and several agitated passengers seeking help from IndiGo’s social media team at X. “Left Delhi holding bag”, read a headline times of India The picture in the newspaper shows hundreds of bags in the passenger seating area.
IndiGo shares fell 0.22% on Tuesday and have lost about 17.1% of their value since the beginning of the month.
Edited by: Louis Olofse