IndiGo chaos update: DGCA asks airline to cut back 5% flights; carrier says ops fully restored

IndiGo flight cancellations: The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) asked IndiGo to cut back 5 per cent of its winter schedule across sectors, especially on high-demand routes. On the other hand, IndiGo said in an update that it has fully restored operations and that their on-time performance reached 90 per cent across the network.

Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu said that IndiGo is being held accountable and that refunds to the tune of Rs 750 crore have already been processed.

The ministry said that 64,346 flights were approved for IndiGo under the winter schedule for November. In the month of November, the airline cancelled 951 flights. The ministry said that IndiGo did “not demonstrate the ability to operate these schedules efficiently”. It also asked IndiGo to submit a revised schedule by December 10.

The airline, hours before the government’s decision, had said in an update that it operated 1,800 flights from 1,650 flights from Sunday. “Network is fully restored,” it said, adding, “90 per cent on-time performance across the network”.

It also said it had undertaken the following:

• Notified all cancellations for Monday the previous day
• Refunded Rs 827 crore
• Over 9,500 hotel rooms were arranged between Dec 1-7
• Almost 10,000 cabs were mobilised
• Over 4,500 bags were delivered, with the rest scheduled to be delivered on Tuesday

Meanwhile, the airline apologised “profusely” but said that it was not possible to “realistically not possible to pinpoint the exact cause(s)” and sought more time to look into the root cause of the disruptions. It however indicated that multiple factors including minor technical issues, winter-schedule transitions, adverse weather, sector-wide congestion, and the rollout of Phase II of the updated flight duty time limitation (FDTL) norms that took effect on November 1, compounded to result in the disruptions.