NEW DELHI: In a first-of-its-kind move, DGCA on Wednesday set up an eight-member “oversight team” of senior flight operations inspectors to oversee IndiGo’s operational aspects, including monitoring flights, crew availability and pilot shortage situation on a daily basis.
Two officials (not pilots) will oversee the cancellation and refund status; payment of compensation to passengers for deficiency in services as per norms and status of baggage return. Two senior FOIs (who are pilots) will remain at the airline’s Gurgaon office on a daily basis to keep a close vigil. Both teams will submit a daily report to DGCA. The order came as it emerged IndiGo had cancelled a fourth of 17,404 domestic flights it was to operate from Dec 1-9 (both days included), as per govt data released Wednesday.
IndiGo scrapped 25% of over 17k domestic flights from Dec 1-9
IndiGo had cancelled a fourth of 17,404 domestic flights between Dec 1 and 9, which explains the unprecedented chaos witnessed at Indian airports. On the other hand, just a shade over 2% of the 2,702 international flights it was to operate in the same time were cancelled.The scale of disruption has seen multiple steps taken by DGCA and govt with the airline’s CEO Pieter Elbers and his team again summoned to the regulator’s office at 3 pm on Thursday to submit “comprehensive” data and also state the steps being taken to steady the ship through steps like hiring of pilots to meet crew shortage. SpiceJet and Air India could operate additional 160-170 daily flights.DGCA officials will be carrying out inspections at 11 airports, including Nagpur, Jaipur, Bhopal, Vijaywada, Cochin, Lucknow, Amritsar and Dehradun to assess the operational preparedness of IndiGo at these places and also see the airline’s “responsiveness during the disruption”.Despite inducting a plane every week and increasing its flights, IndiGo has gone slow on pilot hiring leading to the current mismatch between the requirement and availability of crew members. Now the airline has to submit its entire operational details to govt and then its schedule will accordingly be approved to avoid a rerun of the disruption being seen this month.Elbers and his team on Thursday will have to tell the regulator on Thursday the status of flight restoration, how affected passengers are being accommodated and the monitoring mechanism to ensure timely completion of restoration. They will be asked about the status of refunds, baggage return, how is its improving timely communication about delays and cancellations and the policy on re-routing passengers on alternate flights.
