IndiGo responded to a show-cause notice issued by India’s aviation watchdog after the Indian airline’s widespread flight cancellations, which lasted for nearly a week, and threw airports and passengers into chaos.
IndiGo attributed the disruption to the “compounding effect of multiple factors” and expressed its apology for the inconvenience and hardship caused to customers in a statement shared by Indian news outlets.
The airline asked for more time to conduct a comprehensive ‘Root Cause Analysis’ as per the Director General of Civil Aviation’s (DGCA) manual, which allows a 15-day response timeline. However, for now, the carrier shared some preliminary factors that contributed to the problem:
– Minor technical glitches.
– Schedule changes linked to the start of the winter season.
– Adverse weather conditions.
– Increased congestion in the aviation system.
– Implementation of and operation under the updated crew rostering rules (Flight Duty Time Limitation Phase II).
The Indian carrier said they had previously been in talks with DGCA about challenges around FDTL implementation. In early December, multiple factors compounded to result in a “lower On-Time Network Performance, which affected crew availability,” IndiGo added.
On December 5, the airline saw its greatest number of cancellations, with 1,000 flights canceled, amounting to half its fleet. The reason for this large-scale disruption was due to a “network reboot” to align crew and planes to start afresh the next day and solve the crisis.
IndiGo has cleared Rs8,270 million in refunds as of December 8, with the remaining under process, the airline said. Over 4,500 bags have been delivered to passengers, with the remaining expected in the next 36 hours, IndiGo added.
