- In the past 10 days, Indigo has had to cancel nearly 4,000 flights across the country
- At the centre of the issue is a pilot shortage, stemming from adhering to the new flight duty time limitations rules, set by the DGCA
- The rules allow pilots increased rest periods and reduces the burden of working many consecutive nights—the two factors that helped the budget carrier be “efficient”
- With its flight schedule cut by 10% till March, Indigo has to catch up with the new reality—even if at the cost of second guessing its high-flying dreams
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On 3 December, pilot G and his colleagues were called into a meeting they were not officially invited to.
Indigo’s senior management, including Ashim Mittra, senior vice president of flight operations; Akshay Mohan, deputy head of flight operations; chief pilot Rahul Patil; and Tapas Dey, assistant vice president of HR, wanted to chat with the airline’s pilots.
Exactly a month earlier, Indigo had sent an email to its 5,000-odd pilots, asking them to “surrender” their leave and take up more flying hours. “This has happened for the first time in eight years,” said one of the pilots who was part of the Delhi meet-up. “They’d always said ‘we don’t want your leave’.”
This time, there was no email. Just messages from fleet managers asking them to gather at Gurugram’s Fortune Select Global hotel by 1 p.m.
It didn’t take much for pilot G and others to put two and two together. With the new flight duty time limitations (FDTL)
The management didn’t seem perturbed at the meeting, though. “We are very well-equipped with pilots, and in excess of 30%,” was the repeated response they gave the pilots. The company held one more such meeting—in Bengaluru—around the same time.
Indigo, the largest airline operator in the country, flies around 2,200 flights daily and carries 65% of domestic passengers. But in the past couple of weeks, flight delays and cancellations have become rampant, with disruptions recorded in almost every city. The airline has had to cancel nearly 4,000 flights to date.
“It’s mismanagement by the airline,” said Sumeet Suseelan, member of the civil aviation ministry and chairman of Divine Air, an air-charter company. “Or you can call it overconfidence from [Indigo’s] two decades of smooth operation.”
The public outcry forced the government’s hand, and it cut 10% of Indigo’s scheduled flights until March.
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