150 IndiGo flights cancelled as roster norms rock airline

IndiGo cancelled at least 150 flights on Wednesday, triggering chaotic scenes at major airports across India as the carrier’s struggles to adapt to stringent new crew rostering rules meant even minor operational disruptions snowballed into a full-blown crisis that stranded thousands of passengers.

- Neha LM Tripathi

Queues at IndiGo counters at the Bengaluru airport on Wednesday.

(REUTERS)

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.

“We acknowledge that IndiGo's operations have been significantly disrupted across the network for the past two days, and we sincerely apologise to our customers for the inconvenience caused,” an airline spokesperson said, attributing the debacle to a confluence of factors including technology glitches, adverse weather, increased congestion and the implementation of updated Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) that came into force in November.

The immediate trigger, however, was an emergency Airbus A320 software patch rushed through over the weekend of November 29-30 that disrupted crew scheduling just as the airline was operating with minimal slack due to the FDTL rules. Data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) shows the airline had already been under strain, having cancelled 1,232 flights in November—755 of them attributed to FDTL issues—with on-time performance dropping to 67.70% from 84.1% in October.

Compounding the aviation chaos, IndiGo's baggage systems at Delhi’s Terminal 1 and Terminal 3 encountered problems on Wednesday. “While the issue at T3 was minor, Tl faced severe issues starting at around 1.30pm and going up to around 6pm,” a government official said, adding that the baggage system had trouble providing information. The airline did not comment on this aspect but several passengers stated ground crews were unavailable.