India’s civil aviation ministry has suspended the country’s new flight-duty time limit directive in a bid to ease the severe disruption to budget carrier IndiGo’s services.
The airline has been experiencing particularly serious problems with flight operations as a result of new criteria, and the government intends to carry out an inquiry into the carrier’s situation.
Civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu says the duty-time order has been “suspended with immediate effect” in order to stabilise matters.
According to ministry air transport figures, IndiGo’s on-time performance level sank to just 8.5% on 4 December, compared with around 60% for Air India and Air India Express.
Kinjarapu stresses that the decision has been taken “solely in the interest of passengers” and “without compromising air safety”.
IndiGo acknowledges “widespread” disruption across its network over the past couple of days, with hundreds of cancellations, and has been striving to “reduce the cascading impact” of delays.
“We extend a heartfelt apology to all our customers and industry stakeholders who have been impacted by these events,” the airline adds.
“IndiGo deeply regrets the inconvenience caused and remains focused on streamlining its operations at the earliest.”
The ministry insists that several operational measures have been instructed to restore normal flight services as quickly as possible.
Kinjarapu says that, if the measures are implemented as requested, the ministry expects flight schedules to start returning to normal from 6 December.
“We anticipate full resumption of services within the next three days,” he adds.
Airlines have been told to provide regular and accurate updates to enable passengers to monitor flight status before travelling to airports.
“In the event of any flight cancellations , airlines will automatically issue full refunds to passengers , without any request,” Kinjarapu says.
“For passengers stranded due to long delays, airlines will directly arrange hotel accommodations for them.”
The ministry says a “high-level inquiry” will be conducted to investigate “what went wrong” at IndiGo, and recommend actions to prevent a recurrence.
New flight-duty time rules were put in place in order to manage pilot fatigue more effectively.
IndiGo encountered the problems days after completing the urgent modification of 200 aircraft in its Airbus A320 fleet, during which it claimed “zero cancellations” and “minimal impact” on passenger journeys.
