IndiGo flight cancellations spark chaos across airports: ‘Captain missing, passengers screaming’
The chaos sparked by IndiGo cancelling at least 150 flights on Wednesday spilled over on Thursday as passengers continued to face delays and disruptions
The chaos sparked by IndiGo cancelling at least 150 flights on Wednesday spilled over on Thursday as passengers continued to face delays and disruptions to their travel plans. The country's largest airline grappled with significant operational disruptions mainly due to crew shortage caused by stringent new crew rostering rules.
Chaos across airports
On Thursday morning, passengers booked on IndiGo flights continued to face long delays. Many took to social media to vent.
Anand Sridharan, an investor at Nalanda Capital, revealed that his 7 am IndiGo flight this morning was delayed indefinitely due to the captain being missing.
“Officially, board says flight on time. Staff say Captain is missing, so flight is indefinitely late,” Sridharan wrote on the social media platform X. “Passengers screaming. Others filming the screaming to post on social media.”
He revealed that after half an hour, the missing captain was located. However, by that time, the first officer had gone missing, leading to further delays.
X user Aaraynsh reported similar scenes from Delhi airport, where he said IndiGo’s flight cancellations had created a mess.
He said that when he finally managed to board his flight after multiple cancellations, all passengers had to wait for an hour on the runway because cabin crew had gone missing.
“People heading for weddings, medical appointments etc are stuck. Customer support has a 20 minute wait time. After multiple cancellations I finally boarded and now the flight has been sitting on the runway for an hour because the cabin crew was left behind and we’re waiting for her to reach,” said Aaraynsh.
IndiGo apologises
The airline apologised for the crippling disruption and warned travellers to brace for further cancellations through Friday, saying it had initiated “calibrated adjustments” to stabilise operations over the next 48 hours.
The airline, which operates around 2,300 domestic and international flights daily, on Wednesday said a "multitude of unforeseen operational challenges" have significantly disrupted its operations across the network for the past two days, and apologised to the passengers for the inconvenience.
(Also read: 150 IndiGo flights cancelled as roster norms rock airline)
The challenges include "minor technology glitches, schedule changes linked to the winter season, adverse weather conditions, increased congestion in the aviation system and the implementation of updated crew rostering rules (Flight Duty Time Limitations) had a negative compounding impact on our operations in a way that was not feasible to be anticipated," an airline spokesperson said in a statement.
Over 100 IndiGo flights were cancelled at various airports yesterday, including Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad. At least 42 flights were cancelled at the Bangalore airport, 38 flights at the Delhi airport, 33 at the Mumbai airport and 19 at the Hyderabad airport, said sources to PTI.
IndiGo trends on Google
“IndiGo” has been trending high on Google since Wednesday. Search interest in “IndiGo” started gaining momentum on December 3, Wednesday, and has been steadily rising since. Related search queries on Google included “Why are IndiGo flights getting delayed today”, “IndiGo pilot strike” and “IndiGo flights cancelled”.
The maximum search interest came from Andaman and Nicobar islands, followed by Goa and Delhi.
