Indian regulators held IndiGo’s chief executive accountable for the severe disruptions that have roiled the country’s biggest airline in recent days, faulting the company for “significant lapses in planning, oversight and resource management.”
The Director General of Civil Aviation issued a show-cause notice on Saturday demanding CEO Pieter Elbers explain the cancellations that affected almost half of its flights the day before, adding that “you have failed in your duty to ensure timely arrangements for conduct of reliable operations and the availability of requisite facilities to the passengers.”
Disruption in IndiGo’s services has made the ongoing crisis one of the country’s worst air disruptions, with the carrier accounting for two-thirds of the domestic market operating about 2,200 flights daily. India has also become the world’s third-largest domestic aviation market, fuelled by a rising middle class that has pushed up demand faster than airlines can grow.
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The disruptions – attributed to pilot shortages – began last Tuesday. On Friday, IndiGo had cancelled more than 1,000 flights across India.
The airline said in a statement on Sunday it is on track to operate more than 1,650 flights where its on-time performance reached 75 per cent. That is up from 1,500 on Saturday, when only 30 per cent of its flights departed as scheduled. There is “growing confidence for stabilisation of the network” by Wednesday, moving up an earlier estimate that stretched from December 10 to December 15.
The authorities asked Elbers to show cause within 24 hours after its notice “as to why appropriate enforcement action should not be initiated” against him for the violations.