IndiGo CEO Apologizes as Airline Cancels Over 1,000 Flights Due to New Pilot Rest Regulations

The IndiGo CEO has apologized for the major inconvenience due to delays and cancellations.

New Delhi:

IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers issued a public apology this evening after more than a thousand flights were cancelled today, marking what he described as the "most severely impacted day" in terms of cancellations. The largest airline in India cancelled "more than half" of its daily flights on Friday. Elbers stated that although the crisis will continue on Saturday, the airline expects fewer than 1,000 flight cancellations.

"Full normalisation is expected between December 10 and 15, though IndiGo cautions that recovery will take time due to the scale of operations," the IndiGo CEO said.

IndiGo operates approximately 2,300 domestic and international flights daily.

While apologizing for the significant disruptions caused by delays and cancellations, Pieter Elbers explained that the situation resulted from various factors.

The crisis at IndiGo is attributed to new regulations that increase pilots' weekly rest requirements by 12 hours to 48 and reduce allowable night-time landings from six to only two per week. IndiGo has acknowledged that the mass cancellations resulted from "misjudgment and planning gaps".

Elbers outlined three action plans that the airline will implement to address the issue.

"Firstly, customer communication and addressing your needs, for this, messages have been sent on social media. And just now, a more detailed communication with information, refunds, cancellations and other customer support measures was sent," he said.

The airline has also increased its call centre capacity.

"Secondly, due to yesterday's situation, we had customers stranded mostly at the nation's largest airports. Our focus was for all of them to be able to travel today itself, which will be achieved. For this, we also ask customers whose flights are cancelled not to come to the airports as notifications are sent," the CEO said.

"Thirdly, cancellations were made for today to align our crew and planes to be where they need to start tomorrow morning afresh. Earlier measures of the last few days, regrettable, have proven not to be enough, but we have decided today to reboot all our systems and schedules, resulting in the highest numbers of cancellations so far, but imperative for progressive improvements starting from tomorrow," he added.

As airports experienced chaotic scenes, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) intervened to grant IndiGo a temporary exemption from stricter night duty rules for pilots. It also permitted substitution of leaves with a weekly rest period.

Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu has announced that a high-level inquiry will be ordered and accountability will be established.