New Delhi: The under-fire Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) cracked the whip on Tuesday evening as it decided to slash IndiGo’s schedule by 10%, thereby doubling it from the 5% cut ordered earlier.
The significant reduction in IndiGo’s operations was taken following a meeting between Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu, MoCA Secretary Sameer Sinha and IndiGo CEO Peter Elbers. It’s part of the measures the government has taken to address the unprecedented meltdown of the airline’s services, with thousands of cancellations and delays over the last eight days.
IndiGo will continue to operate on the same routes as before, with a ‘curtailment of 10%, informed the minister.
“Today again, @IndiGo6E CEO Pieter Elbers was summoned to the Ministry to provide an update. He confirmed that 100% of the refunds for flights affected till 6th December have been completed… The Ministry considers it necessary to curtail the overall IndiGo routes, which will help in stabilizing the airline’s operations and lead to reduced cancellations,” Naidu wrote on X.
Earlier in the day, the IndiGo CEO claimed that the crisis-ridden airline is back on track as it continues to solve all pending customer issues.
In a video message, Elbers said that lakhs of customers, whose flights were cancelled or delayed, have already received their full refunds, and the process is ongoing on a daily basis.
“IndiGo is back on its feet, and our operations are stable. We’ve let you down when a major operational disruption happened, and we’re sorry for that,” Elbers said on Tuesday.
“Earlier, we had indicated to normalise between December 10-15. I can confirm now that today, as of December 9, our operations are fully stabilised, which means flights reflecting on our website are scheduled to operate with an adjusted network,” he added.
However, Elbers was tight-lipped on the compensation to customers whose flights were cancelled at the last minute or were hugely delayed.
As per MoCA’s guidelines, if an airline fails to inform a passenger of his/her flight cancellation at least two weeks before departure, compensation is legally mandatory, and its amount depends on the flight duration. And, the airline has to provide compensation automatically, without passengers asking for it.
