Passengers lining up at an IndiGo Airlines kiosk at the Chennai International Airport in Chennai on Dec 5. - AFP
NEW DELHI/BENGALURU: Veerabhadraya Gurupadayya’s first-ever flight experience was supposed to take him to his son’s wedding on the evening of Dec 5. Instead, the 75-year-old went hungry for the better part of the day, barely making the wedding past midnight while losing the bags that contained the groom’s outfit in the ensuing chaos.
The chilli farmer from Hubbali in the southern Indian state of Karnataka was one of the thousands of passengers stranded in airports across the country in the past week as India’s largest domestic airline IndiGo cancelled more than 2,000 flights, facing government action for failing to create a pilot roster in compliance with new aviation rest rules.
“I rushed to the wedding venue, where my son – the groom – was in borrowed clothes, half the ceremonies were finished, and they were waiting for me to arrive for the main rituals,” Veerabhadraya told The Straits Times, relieved that he was able to catch at least a few moments of the celebration.
The inexplicable flight roster indiscretions at IndiGo, which accounts for six out of every 10 passengers who travel by air in India, have caused a near-total breakdown of its services since Dec 1.
The company’s statements attributed the chaos to bad weather, congestion, technical glitches, and to its own miscalculations of the pilots required to operate its flights according to India’s new pilot safety rules that mandate a 48-hour rest period to recover from cumulative fatigue rather than 36 hours.
India’s aviation regulator had issued these Flight Duty Time Limitation rules in January 2024, and they were to come into effect by Nov 1, 2025.
From being an airline once admired for its efficiency and rare ability to notch up profits in an industry that has seen several of its competitors go bust, IndiGo has become the butt of online jokes and passenger anger, spawning hashtags like “ItDidn’tGo”, “IndiNoGo” and “IndiGone”.
The mocking memes and angry newspaper headlines are flying thick and fast, tarnishing the airline’s brand value. Online videos of frustrated people screaming at hapless airline desk employees have gone viral.
Scenes at airports in the world’s fastest-growing aviation market were chaotic. Many passengers sat holding their heads rueing botched celebrations, job interviews and holidays, while others protested at boarding gates.
Dozens of pilgrims marched barefoot in the Bengaluru airport, instead of the temple in Sabarimala that was their destination, chanting “Down, Down, IndiGo!” and “We want flights!” instead of prayers.
Veerabhadraya was booked on an Indigo flight that would have taken him and another son to the evening nuptials at the nation’s capital in northern India.
But when they reached the Bengaluru airport for the 8am flight, they were told it had been cancelled. They spent the entire day waiting at the airport for a rescheduled flight. Shocked at the prices of airport coffee and snacks, they went hungry all day.
“IndiGo airlines didn’t even have the humanity to offer a proper meal of at least rice and curry to paying customers. Even the poorest man in my village would have offered a hungry guest that much,” Veerabhadraya told ST.
After much arguing, the airline’s staff gave them coffee at 5pm and put them on a night flight to Delhi. When they reached there at midnight, IndiGo told them their bags were lost.
As the low-cost carrier makes a slow return to normal operations, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), India’s aviation regulator, issued IndiGo’s chief executive Pieter Elbers a show-cause notice on Dec 7, holding him accountable for a week-long operational crisis.
Indigo has 24 hours to explain why enforcement action should not be taken against it.
The airline, which operates 2,200 flights daily, said it is re-establishing connectivity, noting that it had operated 1,650 flights on Dec 7, compared with 700 on Dec 5. Elbers also said in a statement the airline has begun flying to 135 of its 138 destinations worldwide.
But this means that hundreds of flights remain cancelled, directly affecting an estimated 100,000 passengers. Beyond cancellations, IndiGo’s famed punctuality plummeted from its proud 80 per cent to 30 per cent.
Weary travellers after their flight was cancelled by IndiGo Airlines at Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru, India, on Dec 5.
Singaporean graduate student Angelica See, 30, was to return home on Dec 5 from Bhubaneshwar in east India after attending a friend’s wedding but has been stuck there for three days after her flight through Kolkata was cancelled.
“IndiGo did not inform me about the cancellation, did not update it online either. I found out when I reached the airport,” she told ST.
The airline didn’t provide her any meals or accommodation and refused a refund via e-mail, saying “the delays were caused by extraordinary circumstances beyond the control of the airline”.
See is livid that she had to book hotel rooms for three extra nights in India, and pay 24,000 rupees (S$346) for a return flight to Singapore through New Delhi on Air India in addition to the 19,000 rupees lost in the cancelled IndiGo flight.
“IndiGo offered me a Dec 8 flight, but I refused it because I don’t trust it to honour its commitments any more,” she said.
IndiGo's counter at Delhi's Terminal 1 was still crowded on Dec 6 with people struggling to get spots on replacement flights on the airline or find their luggage that had yet to arrive.
Arjun Kolady, 43, a marketing professional, was also stuck for a day in Bahrain with no information on his rescheduled flight to Mumbai.
“IndiGo didn’t cancel my flight. They just kept delaying it,” he said, so frustrated with the airline that he says he will never fly again. He booked a ticket on a different airline 24 hours later at a fare that was more than his earlier round-trip cost.
At Delhi’s Terminal 1, the airline’s ticket counter on Dec 6 was crowded with people struggling to get seats on replacement flights or searching for luggage that had yet to arrive.
Sunil Kumar, 35, a resident of Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh, was headed on Dec 5 to Male in the Maldives, where he works on a farm. After his morning flight transiting through Bengaluru was cancelled, he was put on another flight leaving at night the next day – and even that was cancelled.
While IndiGo has claimed it has rolled out several relief measures for its affected passengers, including hotel accommodation, Sunil said he had not been provided a room, forcing him to spend the night with a friend in the city.
Even getting information from the airline has proved difficult, with long periods of waiting outside the airport in the wintry cold.
“Something like this has never happened… I feel really disgraced and humiliated,” he told ST.
Also seated near the airline’s ticket counter in Delhi was Gurpreet Singh, a 30-year-old government official who found his flight to Guwahati in east India on the evening of Dec 6 had been cancelled after he landed in Delhi earlier in the day from Jammu.
He had to queue up for around two hours at the counter to find a seat on another IndiGo flight that was expected to take off the next evening.
The airline did not provide Gurpreet with accommodation, forcing him to book a hotel room at his expense in the city. IndiGo officials, he said, told him there were “chairs outside” at the airport when he asked where he should spend the night.
“It should not be that you simply put out a message saying you are sorry for the inconvenience,” said Gurpreet, disheartened by the lack of support from IndiGo.
“Your apology should be reflected in your actions.”
IndiGo’s ambiguous explanations for the chaos have not blunted public anger.
According to the DGCA, the primary trigger for the crisis was IndiGo failing to plan for the additional staffing needs, leading to a cascading operational failure.
“It strains credulity that the dominant market leader failed to plan for such a foreseeable outcome, particularly given a lead time exceeding 12 months,” wrote economist Anupam Manur in The Indian Express. He was also affected by the flight cancellations.
The Dec 7 show-cause notice from India’s aviation regulator accused IndiGo, among other things, of not planning revised duty and rest requirements for cockpit crew and failing to provide information, assistance or facilities mandated for passengers during cancellations and delays.
The notice, however, came a day after the aviation regulator rescinded the new rules on rest time for cockpit crew, in response to IndiGo’s request.
Minister for Civil Aviation K. Rammohan Naidu told India Today that “keeping the interest of air travellers in mind, we have just given temporary abeyance to IndiGo”.
“Providing exemptions to IndiGo is a horrible outcome that rewards this errant behaviour. There must be proportionate repercussions,” said Professor Manur.
Experts say that passengers remain vulnerable since they would likely have to choose IndiGo again in the absence of any viable alternatives.
Vijay Gopalan, former chief financial officer of AirAsia India, suggested that to protect customers from excessive reliance on a few aviation players, the Indian government must create policies that enable other companies, Indian or foreign, to operate more easily in India.
“Having a near duopoly (with Air India) is a disaster waiting to happen… The government should make regulations more start-up airline friendly. We need more options,” Gopalan said.
He admits, though, that entering the Indian aviation sector was not easy, and would require an initial investment of at least 30 billion rupees, regulatory support and priority slots in popular routes.
For Veerabhadraya though, the nightmare was recurring when ST found him sitting outside the Delhi airport on Dec 6, waiting for his indefinitely delayed return flight home.
His next flight could well be the last one, after his first two turned into “a punishment”. He has sworn to “travel only on trains even if it takes days to get anywhere”. - The Straits Times/ANN
