IndiGo cancels 60 flights at Bengaluru as monitoring intensified; CEO Piter Elbers to appear before DGCA
PTC Web Desk: IndiGo’s operational crisis deepened on Thursday as the airline cancelled 60 flights at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport, even as aviation regulator DGCA expanded its monitoring following widespread disruptions linked to the rollout of revised crew duty regulations. According to airport sources, the cancellations included 32 arrivals and 28 departures.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has summoned IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers, directing him to submit a detailed report outlining the causes behind the continuing disruptions, supporting data and the airline’s corrective measures.
The cancellations come a day after IndiGo scrapped 220 flights across major hubs, Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai, with Delhi recording the highest number of disruptions at 137. The airline has been battling turmoil for over a week, with thousands of passengers affected nationwide.
IndiGo chairman Vikram Mehta issued his first public statement on Wednesday after 10 days of silence, apologising for the chaos. He attributed the large-scale disruptions to a mix of internal shortcomings and external challenges, such as minor technical issues, seasonal schedule changes with the start of winter operations, poor weather, growing congestion in the aviation network, and the transition to updated Flight Duty Time Limit (FDTL) norms.
However, industry observers noted that other Indian carriers faced the same external challenges without suffering similar levels of disruption. A deeper personnel issue has also surfaced. IndiGo has seen a decline of 378 pilots over the last nine months, despite the airline earlier telling the regulator that the new FDTL norms would only require a modest 3% increase in crew strength. In March this year, the carrier had 5,463 pilots, but government records from December 8 show the number has fallen to 5,085.
With the airline’s troubles persisting, the DGCA has increased scrutiny by deploying its officials directly to IndiGo’s headquarters in Gurugram. An oversight group comprising eight senior captains has been set up, and two of them, along with two government officials, will remain stationed at the airline’s control centre. Their mandate includes monitoring flight cancellations, crew allocation, unplanned leave and routes affected by manpower gaps. They will file daily reports to the regulator.
Pilot associations have blamed IndiGo’s staffing crisis on years of inadequate planning. The Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) alleged that while rival airlines prepared well in advance for the FDTL transition, IndiGo relied on a “lean manpower” model. The group accused the airline of imposing a hiring freeze, entering non-poaching agreements, maintaining a prolonged pay freeze and adopting short-term strategies that left it vulnerable once the new rules took effect.
Despite IndiGo’s assurances earlier this week that operations were stabilising, the steady stream of cancellations suggests the airline is still struggling to regain control of its schedules.
- With inputs from agencies
