IndiGo, India’s most popular airline, has canceled more than 1,000 flights accross the country. File Photo by Divyakant Solanki/EPA
More than 1,000 flights in India have been canceled Friday by IndiGo, the country’s most popular local airline, after the company struggled to follow new pilot rest rules.
On Tuesday, IndiGo started canceling flights, citing a lack of crew members. On Friday, it canceled every departure from New Delhi Airport, the busiest airport in the country.
IndiGo is India’s largest airline. It has about 2,300 flights per day, with 118 million passenger arrivals last year. The company said operations will return to normal by Feb. 10.
In a video statement, CEO Pieter Elbers said a “reboot” of systems and schedules caused the cancellations.
On Friday, passengers posted videos of crowds chanting “IndiGo shame! Shame, shame!” The New York Times reported.
The company has apologized repeatedly and said the weather and technical glitches also contributed to the issues. New rules requiring rest time for pilots also caused some of the trouble.
The new rules were announced two years ago and went into effect last month. The Indian Pilots Association argued that the company should have been prepared.
“All other airlines have provisioned pilots adequately and remain largely unaffected,” the union said in a statement. IndiGo’s cancellations were “the direct consequence of IndiGo’s prolonged and unorthodox lean manpower strategy.”
India’s aviation authority sent a memo Friday that withdrew one of the pilots’ rest requirements “in view of the ongoing operational disruptions.”
“You cannot compromise safety for commercial interest,” said the president of the Federation of Indian Pilots C.S. Randhawa. The government released a statement later in the afternoon saying that safety would not be compromised.
The government has told IndiGo to submit a detailed plan on crew recruitment, training, roster restructuring, safety-risk assessments and other mitigation measures right away.
IndiGo has said it will waive the cost of all cancellation and reschedule requests for travel through Dec. 15. The company said it’s also arranging hotel rooms and food for passengers experiencing travel disruptions.
