India's biggest airline carrier IndiGo has been facing a lot of criticism from lakhs of travellers for the past 3 to 4 days. Thousands of flights cancellations and hundreds of delayed IndiGo flights have left passengers stranded on airport. IndiGo has already issued formaly public apology on social media and has assured the people that flight services will soon return to normalcy.
However, the question still persists why IndiGo is not able to solve the problem even after 3 to 4 days?
Capt. Kaushal Sharma, CEO of Dhillon Aviation Pvt Ltd, talking to True Scoop explained why is IndiGo facing such problem in simpler terms.
Captain Sharma said-
"The fundamental cause is the recent enforcement of stricter duty and rest-time regulations for pilots and crew. Under the updated rules: weekly rest periods increased, night-duties/landings were sharply limited, and duty-hour caps tightened. Because of this, many crew members became ineligible for previously scheduled flights — causing acute crew shortage."
Although scheduled airlines had advance notice of the regulation changes, IndiGo reportedly did not expand its crew roster sufficiently or make alternate crew arrangement plans.
"With Indigo’s broad domestic and international network, even a relatively small proportion of flights impacted becomes a large absolute number, leading to mass cancellations or delays. IndiGo flies almost over 2000 flights on daily basis, when one flight or crew rotation gets disrupted, it can cascade impacting subsequent flights, crew reassignments, and aircraft availability, multiplying the overall cancellation count," added Capt. Kaushal Sharma.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Friday eased some pilot duty rules with immediate effect.
To control the spiralling crisis, the aviation regulator has announced partial relief on pilot duty rules in its latest notification, relaxing a clause which debarred airlines from club leaves with weekly rest.
Referring to its earlier order of "no leave shall be substituted for weekly rest", the DGCA said that “In view of the ongoing operational disruptions and representations received from various airlines regarding the need to ensure continuity and stability of operations, it has been considered necessary to review the said provision”.
Therefore, the instruction “that no leave shall be substituted for weekly rest is hereby withdrawn with immediate effect,” said the regulator.
IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers on Friday said that given the size, scale, and complexity of their operations, it will take some time to return to a full normal situation, "which we do anticipate between the 10 to 15th of December".
Addressing the passengers in a video message amid the unprecedented situation where the airline had to cancel over a thousand flights in the last three days, the CEO apologised to the customers, saying the situation is a result of various causes and the company is taking a few fresh measures to address the situation.
"We have experienced severe operational disruptions for the past few days. Since then, the crisis continued to aggravate, with today, December 5th, being the most severely impacted day with the number of cancellations well over a thousand or more than half of our number of daily flights," Elbers stated.
"I, on behalf of all of us at Indigo, would like to extend our sincerest apologies for the major inconvenience this has caused to many of our customers on account of delays or cancellations," he added.
The Ministry of Civil Aviation on Saturday directed IndiGo to clear all pending passenger refunds by 8 pm on Sunday.
This comes amid the ongoing disruption of IndiGo flights, which continued for its fifth consecutive day, with a total of 405 domestic flights cancelled.
In a statement, the Ministry “mandated that the refund process for all cancelled or disrupted flights must be fully completed by 8:00 PM on Sunday, December 7”.
“Airlines have also been instructed not to levy any rescheduling charges for passengers whose travel plans were affected by cancellations,” it added.
The Ministry has clarified that "any delay or non-compliance in refund processing will invite immediate regulatory action".
With inputs: IANS