IndiGo to resume normal operations by December 15: CEO Pieter Elbers

Moments after the civil aviation ministry today set up an inquiry into IndiGo’s massive flight disruptions leading to chaos and discomfort to passengers this week, CEO Pieter Elbers said the airline will return to a “full normal situation” between December 10 and December 15. 

Elbers said the airline has deployed a three-pronged approach to address the issue and hoped the situation to improve form tomorrow with lesser flights getting cancelled. “We expect tomorrow to have cancellations below 1000. The support of DGCA in providing specific FDTL implementation relief is of great help,” Elbers said in a video message.  

“Still, there is a lot of work in progress. But going forward from here, in alignment with the civil aviation ministry and DGCA, we do expect to improve every day. Given the size scale and complexity of our operation it will take some time to return to a full normal situation, which we do anticipate till the 10th and 15th of December,” Elbers said.

Elbers said today, December 5 was the most severely impacted day with the number of cancellations of over a thousand, which is more than half of our number of daily flights. “I, on behalf of all of us at Indigo, would like to extend our sincerest apologies for the major inconvenience it has caused many of our customers on account of delays or cancellations,” he said.  

Communication is the key

“The situation is a result of various causes. Yet, for you as a customer, it is important how we at Indigo address them. We have defined three lines of action,” he said.  

“Firstly, customer communication and addressing your needs. For this, messages have been sent on the social media and more detailed communication with information on refunds cancellations, and other customer support measures were sent. Also, we have stepped up our call center capacity,” Elbers added.  

Help for stranded flyers

“Secondly, due to yesterday’s situation, we had customers stranded mostly at the nation’s largest airports. Our focus was for all of them to be able to travel today itself, which will be achieved,” he added.  

“For this we also asked customers whose flights are cancelled not to come to airport as notifications are being sent,” he said.  

Cancellations for timely operations

Elblers mentioned that cancellations were done to align crew and aircraft for timely operation tomorrow.

“Thirdly, cancellations were made for today to align our crew and planes to be where they need to start afresh tomorrow morning. Earlier measures of the last few days regrettably have proven not to be enough. But we have decided today for a reboot of all our systems and schedules resulting in highest number of cancellations so far. But it is imperative for progressive improvements starting from tomorrow,” he added.