Civil Aviation Minister orders 10 pc curtailment of IndiGo flights, airline says operations stable

New Delhi/Mumbai, Dec 9 (PTI) The Civil Aviation Minister has asked for a 10 per cent cut in planned IndiGo flights to help restore order at India's biggest airline, which cancelled thousands of flights nationwide after failing to plan for tighter safety regulations.

Posting a picture of IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers, sitting with folded hands in front of him, Minister Ram Mohan Naidu, in a post on X, said that the airline management was summoned to the ministry to provide an update.

"The Ministry considers it necessary to curtail the overall Indigo routes, which will help in stabilising the airline's operations and lead to reduced cancellations. A curtailment of 10 per cent has been ordered. While abiding by it, Indigo will continue to cover all its destinations as before," he said.

The curtailment is double of what the sector regulator DGCA had ordered on Monday.

As part of the winter schedule for 2025-26, the airline has been operating over 2,200 flights per day.

Airline, on its part, said there was "steady improvement across the network", as it reinstated flights to all 138 stations. It flew more than 1,800 flights on Tuesday, which will go up to nearly 1,900 on Wednesday, IndiGo said in a statement.

"We have optimised our operations, and our on-time performance is also back to normal levels," it added.

Earlier in the day, Minister Naidu in the Lok Sabha said that no airline, however large, will be permitted to cause hardship to passengers through planning failures and non-compliance with regulations.

"Strict and appropriate action will be taken." The DGCA, he said, has already issued notices to IndiGo and that the airline is being held fully accountable for the chaos caused by its internal crew-rostering failures.

IndiGo flight schedules are stabilising, and all other airlines continue to operate smoothly across the country, he said.

After meeting the IndiGo CEO, the minister in the post on X said, "During the last week, many passengers faced severe inconvenience due to Indigo's internal mismanagement of crew rosters, flight schedules and inadequate communication".

While the enquiry and necessary actions are underway, another meeting with IndiGo's top management was held to review the stabilisation measures on Tuesday evening.

IndiGo CEO "confirmed that 100 per cent of the refunds for flights affected till 6th December have been completed. A strict instruction to expedite the completion of the remaining refunds and baggage handover was given," he said.

"Indigo has been instructed to comply with all the directives of the Ministry, including fare capping and passenger convenience measures without any exception." On Tuesday, IndiGo cancelled 422 flights from six metro airports, as the disruption in the crisis-hit airline prolonged for the eighth consecutive day.

Prior to meeting the Civil Aviation Minister, Elbers, in a video message on X, said the airline is back on its feet, and operations are stable.

"IndiGo is back on its feet, and our operations are stable. We've let you down when a major operational disruption happened, and we're sorry for that," he said. "Earlier, we had indicated to normalise between December 10-15. I can confirm now that today, as of December 9, our operations are fully stabilised, which means flights reflecting on our website are scheduled to operate with an adjusted network." The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), in the December 8 order, asked IndiGo to submit a revised schedule by Wednesday.

The latest order is part of a suite of actions by authorities that followed IndiGo, which controls over 65 per cent of the market share, cancelling more than 4,000 flights since December 2 that left tens of thousands of passengers stranded, upending their vacation plans, important meetings and weddings.

DGCA, which previously issued a show cause notice to IndiGo's chief executive and chief operating officer to explain the disruptions, has set up a four-member panel to probe the lapses.

The regulator, in the fresh notice, said that IndiGo's winter schedule shows that the airline has increased its departures by 9.66 per cent from last year, while the same relation to its summer schedule is set to rise by 6.05 per cent.

"However, the airline has not demonstrated an ability to operate these schedules efficiently," the notice said.

"Therefore, it is directed to reduce the schedule by 5 per cent across sectors, especially on high-demand, high-frequency flights, and to avoid single-flight operations on a sector by IndiGo." For decades, IndiGo relied on aggressive scheduling and max night-flight utilisation - a business model that collapsed when tighter safety regulations that increased the mandatory weekly rest period for pilots and sharply reduced permissible night-landings and any extended night-duty hours came into force.

The result was catastrophic: on-time performance plunged, hundreds of flights were cancelled daily, and major airports saw chaos with stranded passengers, overloaded terminals and long queues.

IndiGo has said that increased congestion in the aviation system, the implementation of pilot rest rules from November 1, minor technical glitches and adverse weather were behind the disruptions. It operated over 2,200 flights daily before the travel chaos struck.

The airline has said it hopes to return to normalcy this week.

The DGCA, in its flight curtailment order, said it had approved 15,014 IndiGo departures per week for the winter season when travel demand picks up in India. But the airline cancelled 951 flights in November out of the 64,346 flights approved for the entire month.

Shares of InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, the firm that operates the IndiGo, were down 2 per cent on Tuesday. The shares have lost over 17 per cent of their value this month.

Acknowledging that the people, whose flights were abruptly cancelled or delayed, were travelling for various reasons, the IndiGo CEO said, "Thousands of you could not travel, and we are profusely apologetic about that".

Initially, the airline's first priority was to get "all stranded and delayed customers safely" to their destinations or back home, Elbers said, adding that "then we started our refunds".

Lakhs of customers have already received their full refunds, and the airline continues to do so on a daily basis, he said without giving any specific amount that IndiGo has released so far.

"Most of the bags stuck at airports have already been delivered back to your homes, and our teams are working very hard on delivering the remaining ones very soon. And we also continue to address all customer needs," Elbers said.

He said that the restoration of IndiGo's network and flights was being done on a "war footing".

"On December 5, we could only fly 700 flights. Thereafter, gradually yet steadily improving to 1,500 on December 6, 1,650 on December 7, 1,800 on Monday and Tuesday, more than 1,800," the CEO said.

As of Monday, the airline was flying back to all its 138 destinations in its network, he said, adding that IndiGo's on-time performance was also back to normal. PTI IAS BAL BAL