New Delhi/Mumbai, December 6 (Udaipur Kiran). The massive disruption at India’s largest airline IndiGo has affected air travel across the country. Thousands of passengers were stranded for hours at several airports including Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Indore and Thiruvananthapuram due to flight cancellations and delays. However, late at night, Delhi Airport Authorities issued an advisory stating, “We are pleased that IndiGo’s flight services are getting back on track.”

Official sources informed on Saturday that amid delays and flight cancellations of IndiGo flights across the country, aviation regulator DGCA helped the crisis-hit IndiGo normalize its operations by providing several relaxations, due to which the airline’s flight services are now getting back on track. However, passengers are still facing problems today due to IndiGo flight delays at several important airports in the country including Chennai, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Bhopal.

Meanwhile, IndiGo Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Pieter Elbers apologized for the inconvenience caused to passengers in a statement issued late at night and expressed hope that flight operations would normalize between December 10-15. He said that we expect the number of cancelled flights on Saturday to remain below 1,000. IndiGo had cancelled more than 1,000 flights on Friday, which is half the airline’s total daily flights.

Earlier, aviation watchdog DGCA on Friday helped crisis-hit IndiGo normalize its operations by providing several relaxations. The airline’s operations have been disrupted for the fourth consecutive day. DGCA gave IndiGo some other concessions besides allowing relaxation in pilots’ duty time limits. This will enable more pilots to be on duty and operations can be normalized soon.

Amid IndiGo’s flight crisis, airfares are touching the sky. The fare for Kolkata-Mumbai flight has reached Rs 90,000. Airfares in most cities of the country appeared to be sky-high. According to airline companies’ websites, on December 6, SpiceJet’s one-way economy class ticket rate for Kolkata-Mumbai reached up to Rs 90,000, while Air India’s Mumbai-Bhubaneswar tickets were selling for up to Rs 84,485.

It is noteworthy that due to crew shortage, IndiGo cancelled more than 1,000 flights on Friday, resulting in a three to four-fold increase in airfares from normal limits. IndiGo, which controls about two-thirds of the country’s domestic traffic and typically operates around 2,300 flights daily.

(Udaipur Kiran) / Prajesh Shankar

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