IndiGo Airlines Crisis: Irregularities in Indigo Airlines flights continued for the eighth day. On Tuesday, the airline canceled a total of 422 flights from six major airports of the country. According to PTI report, out of these canceled flights, 152 flights were canceled at Delhi airport alone and 121 flights were canceled at Bengaluru. 58 flights in Hyderabad, 41 in Mumbai and more than 50 in Chennai were cancelled. Due to continuous flight cancellations, there was a lot of trouble and confusion among the passengers.
In view of the continuous disruption in flights, the government has intervened. The Civil Aviation Ministry has ordered a 5% reduction in IndiGo’s flight services during the winter programme. Along with this, instructions have also been given that if the airline does not follow the approved schedule, its slots will be made available to other airlines. The government says that Indigo has failed to handle its expanded schedule, so it became necessary to take this step.
Indigo – the country’s largest domestic airline
Gurugram-based Indigo Airlines is the largest airline in India’s domestic aviation sector with more than 65% market share. On Monday, the company had canceled more than 560 flights from six airports. DGCA also informed that the airline has increased its flights by about 9.66% compared to the winter schedule 2024, while an increase of 6.05% has been made compared to the summer schedule 2025. But the company was not able to handle this expansion smoothly, resulting in massive flight cancellations.
IndiGo CEO Peter Elbers said in a video statement released on Tuesday that the company’s operations are now slowly getting back on track. He said that full ticket fees are being refunded to passengers of canceled or delayed flights and refunds have also been sent to lakhs of customers. However, he did not give any clear information about the compensation, whereas as per the rules, if the information is not given within two weeks, the airlines have to compulsorily compensate the passengers.
Passenger problems and luggage situation
Peter Albers also said that most of the luggage stuck at airports has been delivered to customers’ homes. The team is working to send the bags that are still left soon. The company says that in the first phase their aim was to take the stranded passengers to their destination and after that the refund process was started.
According to the CEO, while the company was able to operate only 700 flights on December 5, the number of flights gradually increased in the following days to 1,500 on December 6, 1,650 on December 7, 1,800 on December 8 and more than 1,800 on December 9. By Monday, IndiGo was operating flights to all 138 destinations in its network and on-time performance was also returning to normal.
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