New Delhi: IndiGo has replied to the showcause notice issued by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) over record flight disruptions.
IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers, who was served the notice after more than 1,000 cancellations in a single day, highest ever by an Indian carrier, said the airline was “profusely apologetic” for the massive nationwide flight disruptions last week, insisting that the crisis resulted from an “unfortunate and unforeseeable confluence” of multiple operational challenges.
“Deeply regretful” about the chaos caused pan-India, IndiGo stated that it was “realistically not possible to pi
npoint the exact cause(s)” immediately due to the scale of its operations.
Noting that DGCA guidelines allow 15 days to respond to such notices, IndiGo said it needed additional time to complete a comprehensive root-cause analysis, and assured the government that the full report will be submitted once complete.
In its reply, IndiGo listed five factors for the unprecedented meltdown of its services — minor technical glitches, winter schedule transitions, adverse weather conditions, increasing congestion in the aviation system and challenges linked to implementing updated crew-rostering rules under Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) Phase II.
Government officials and the DGCA are likely to meet the IndiGo CEO on Tuesday morning to review the airline’s recent operational failures, News18 reported citing sources.
The Ministry of Civil Aviation is examining whether certain IndiGo routes need to be curtailed or restructured to stabilise operations and prevent a repeat of the large-scale disruptions over the past one week.