New Delhi. After the huge chaos in flights last week, DGCA has tightened the surveillance on IndiGo. Following these disruptions affecting thousands of passengers, the DGCA on Wednesday formed an 8-member oversight team to keep an eye on the airline’s operations. This team will give reports daily till 6 pm and monitoring will continue till Indigo flights become normal. The team’s focus will be on fleet size, pilot availability, crew utilization, training schedules and unplanned leave patterns.
Intensive investigation of daily operations, two officers posted at headquarters
DGCA has not only formed a large monitoring team but has also deployed two officers at IndiGo headquarters in Gurugram. Their job will be to directly monitor important aspects like domestic and international flight cancellation, refund processing, on-time flight operations (OTP), passenger compensation and baggage returns. Along with this, the team will also check daily how many flights were operated, how many sectors were affected due to crew shortage and what was the availability of standby crew.
Senior inspector will join the team, special focus on crew shortage
The committee includes senior flight operations inspectors – Captain Vikram Sharma, Captain Kapil Mangilak, Captain VP Singh, Captain Apoorva Agarwal, Captain Swati Loomba, Captain Aman Suhag, Captain Nitya Jain and Captain NJ Singh. This team will conduct a detailed assessment of crew strength, standby cabin and cockpit crew and sectors affected by shortage. According to DGCA, IndiGo will have to fix all its operational deficiencies as soon as possible so that inconvenience to passengers can be reduced.
DGCA summons Indigo CEO, demands detailed report
Making the action more stringent, DGCA has summoned IndiGo CEO Peter Elbers at 3 pm on Thursday. They will have to submit a complete data report on recent operational disruptions. DGCA has directed the airlines to provide all important data like flight resumption status, pilot-cabin crew recruitment plans, updated manpower details, number of flights canceled and refund process. This will allow the regulator to determine how effective the airline’s preparations are to improve the situation.
