Minister slams IndiGo, says it didn’t comply with new norms

The Union government appeared to harden its stance against embattled airline IndiGo on Thursday as civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu blamed the airline’s “gross mismanagement” and issues with the crew rostering system for the scheduling meltdown that affected millions of flyers this month.

- HT Correspondent

Stranded passengers at the Jaiprakash Narayan Airport in Patna amid Indigo flight disruptions on Thursday.

(SANTOSH KUMAR/HT PHOTO)

The comments came on a day IndiGo chief executive officer Pieter Elbers appeared before the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and was asked to come back on Friday before the regulator's four-member committee.

After 10 days of scrapped flights, stranded passengers and airports overflowing with misdirected pieces of baggage, cancellations continued on Thursday, with the airline cancelling 200 pre-planned flights and 60 more at airports, despite assurances to the contrary by the carrier as well as the government.

“The crisis was result of gross mismanagement by IndiGo only. There were some issues with their internal crew rostering system, which could have been avoided in compliance with the new norms under the Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) guidelines, which unfortunately did not happen,” Naidu told news channel India Today at the Agenda AajTak programme.

The minister also called the situation “shocking” and said the ministry was not relying on the airline's explanations and conducting its own inquiry through DGCA. “Why were IndiGo's pilots on a freeze for the past six months? Six months, no pilot hiring,” he said, according to the India Today transcript of the programme.