NEW DLEHI: IndiGo – which flies almost two out of three domestic passengers – is witnessing massive flight delays and some cancellations due to a crippling crew shortage. Govt days shows only 35% IndiGo flights (the airline operates over 2,200 daily) operated on time Tuesday (Dec 2). And on Wednesday, multiple airports including Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru reported almost 200 flight cancellations till the afternoon itself.The airline is facing severe pilot shortage ever since the new flight duty time limitation (FDTL) norms became applicable last month which lays out more humane rostering for crew. Harried officials across airports said Wednesday that IndiGo delays and cancellations are causing major issues. “For some flights there was no cabin crew available so they had to be cancelled. The airline is sending crew to different bases to operate flights but the shortage is such that things are out of hand. Who could have ever imagined IndiGo – whose USP is OTP – will drop to 35%, even below Alliance Air and SpiceJet. Flights are getting delayed by anywhere upto 7-8 hours,” said airport officials.
On its part, an IndiGo spokesperson said: “We have had several unavoidable flight delays and some cancellations in the past few days due to various reasons including technology issues, airport congestion, and operational requirements. Our teams are working diligently to ensure that operations normalise as soon as possible. Furthermore, we are offering alternate flight options or refunds to affected customer, as applicable. We regret the inconvenience caused to our valued customers due to these disruptions.” The airline has requested “customers to check latest flight status at https://www.goindigo.in/check-flight-status.html before heading to the airport, to help minimise inconvenience.” This is the peak travel.period with India seeing about 5 lakh and even more domestic passengers daily. IndiGo accounts for more than 60% domestic market share. With its 65% flights delayed on a day, the impact can be imagined. The ripple or cascading effect of such delays linger on for significant period of time.Airport-specific issues are making matters even worse. At Delhi Airport, for instance, the airline’s baggage messaging system wasn’t working on Wednesday. “There’s chaos at baggage retrieval at Terminal 1 and in some measure at T3 also,” said sources.
