Not possible to pinpoint disruption cause: IndiGo

Minister promises strict action; airline board members unsure if CEO must go

- DEEPAK PATEL

As the IndiGo crisis entered its seventh day with hundreds of flights grounded, the impact was felt beyond just the airports. In Parliament, Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu said on Monday that the government would take “strict” action in the matter and “set an example” for the rest of the aviation sector. Although Naidu did not specify the nature of action, IndiGo board members, when contacted, were unsure whether heads should roll because of the weeklong chaos.

On its part, IndiGo (InterGlobe Aviation Ltd) told the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) Monday evening, in reply to a showcause notice, that it is “realistically not possible to pinpoint the exact cause” of the operational disruption at this time due to the airline’s “complexity and vast scale of operations”. The company attributed the crisis to the “compounding effect of multiple factors”, which operated in an “unfortunate and unforeseeable confluence”. The response from the IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers and COO Isidro Porqueras came after they had got additional 24 hours to reply to the showcause. They referred to the new flight duty time limitation (FDTL), technical glitches and weather issues as some of the factors in their response.

While IndiGo flight cancellations have attracted political reactions from day one, Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu defended the civil aviation minister — a member of his Telugu Desam Party — on Monday.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu said the massive cancellations were caused by the airline's poor crew roster management and not government policy. Responding to political critics, he said that the crisis was being sensationalised to distract from their own failures.