Bhubaneswar: Passengers at Biju Patnaik International Airport (BPIA) in Bhubaneswar have been enduring severe inconvenience for the past three days with IndiGo, India’s largest low-cost carrier, grappling with significant operational disruptions, leading to widespread flight cancellations and delays.
By 8:30 am, the Bhubaneswar–Bengaluru service was running late by over 30 minute and Bhubaneswar-Mumbai by an hour, while flights to Kolkata and Singapore were also behind schedule. The Bhubaneswar–Dehradun flight was cancelled, sources said on Thursday.
Source further stated that the airline cancelled the flight, which was scheduled to take passengers to Shirdi via Chennai. IndiGo shifted their tickets to the next day with a connecting flight via Hyderabad.
The fresh wave of flight cancellations reportedly primarily stemmed from crew shortages.
Incidentally, two fligh
ts scheduled to depart from Bhubaneswar to Hyderabad and New Delhi at 10:10 pm and 10:20 pm, respectively, were abruptly cancelled on Wednesday night. The cancellation was announced on the flight information display system around 9 pm, leaving many passengers rushing to the IndiGo counter for clarification and subsequent chaos. Many passengers had to spend the night at the airport and were given boarding pass for the following day.
Source further stated that multiple arrivals and departures were delayed throughout Wednesday, including the Bhubaneswar–Mumbai flight, which was delayed for the second day in a row.
Two IndiGo flights for Mumbai and Bengaluru, which were rescheduled on Tuesday, finally took off on Wednesday at 12:30 pm and 12:45 pm respectively.
However, BPIA director Prasanna Pradhan denied any delay in flight operations till Wednesday evening.
Disgruntled flyers flooded X (formerly Twitter) with complaints as IndiGo services remained heavily disrupted at major airports across the country for over 48 hours. One passenger travelling from Bhubaneswar to Hyderabad criticised the airline for failing to inform passengers about Tuesday’s delay.
They also reported long wait times, uncertainty over connecting flights, and problems with luggage delivery.