IndiGo cancelled over 600 flights on Sunday, an improvement over the past two days, and scrambled to clear its refund backlog while grappling with passenger complaints about unfair deductions.
The government, which again asked IndiGo to complete disbursing full refunds by Sunday evening — without deducting rescheduling fees — said the airline had processed refunds totalling ₹610 crore so far. It did not say how much was still pending, nor did IndiGo say anything on the subject.
The civil aviation ministry has also instructed IndiGo to trace and deliver within 48 hours all the baggage separated from passengers during the six days of flight disruptions. Sources said IndiGo had handed back 3,000 pieces of luggage to passengers by Saturday.
Aviation regulator DGCA has granted IndiGo a one-time 24-hour extension of the deadline to reply to a showcause notice. The airline had sought more time, citing operational constraints. The DGCA warned IndiGo of ex-parte action based on available records if the airline failed to respond.
An anonymous open letter was circulating widely on social media assailing IndiGo’s top leadership, particularly the non-Indians on the board, saying the airline’s shenanigans had turned Indian aviation into a laughing stock worldwide.
IndiGo’s social media accounts bristled with passenger complaints alleging unfair deductions. The airline replied to some of them.
Citing the government’s norm that the entire amount should be refunded, an X user tagged the airline and said he had been charged a convenience fee by ticket-booking platform MakeMyTrip for the cancellation.
IndiGo replied: “Hi, please be informed the full refund has been processed to the original mode of booking/ travel agency. We kindly request you to reach out to the concerned agency to claim the same.”
To a query from this newspaper, MakeMyTrip said directions had been given to refund such deductions.
Another X user asked IndiGo: “Why INR 498 deductions, if cancellation is from your end? I got on-call assurance that it will be a full refund. What kind of scam are you pulling.”
‘Progress’
As cancellations left hundreds of passengers stranded on Sunday, too, IndiGo claimed to be “making very significant progress in restoring our flight schedules and strengthening our customer support systems”.
The airline, which normally operates 2,300 flights daily, said it was on track to operate over 1,650 on Sunday, up from 1,500 on Saturday, and improve timeliness over the past two days.
IndiGo’s flight operations had increased from 706 on Friday to 1,565 on Saturday. Its “on-time performance”, which hit an all-time low of 3.7 per cent on Friday, was 20.7 per cent on Saturday.
The aviation ministry too said that air travel was stabilising fast across the country.
“All other domestic airlines are operating smoothly and at full capacity, while IndiGo’s performance has shown steady improvement today, with flight schedules moving back towards normal levels,” the ministry said.
Letter lash
An X user, AWCS, who shared the open letter, claimed it was from IndiGo pilots. The letter itself didn’t identify the writer(s).
“And now the world laughs at us. When I travelled recently, people joked, Indians can’t even run one stable airline?” the letter said.
“It hurts because it’s not the Indian workforce failing you,” it added, asserting the management failure mostly involved foreigners on the board.
“(CEO) Peter Elbers who was holidaying in his native Netherlands when this wildfire happened. Isidore Porqueras who hails from the land of Señoritas and no one has a clue what he’s doing here,” the letter said.
“Jason Herter from land of yankees whose arrival in Indigo started the downfall in employees and employer relationship 8 years back.”
The letter also blamed some of the Indians within the IndiGo hierarchy, naming Aditi Kumari, Ashim Mitra, Akshay Mohan, Rahul Patil and Tapas Dey.
“We don’t need damage-control videos. We don’t need PR apologies. We need action,” the letter said.
It urged the government to fix minimum wages for ground staff, enforce minimum manpower per aircraft, revisit fatigue rules with employee representation, and punish operational negligence that affects hundreds of thousands of passengers.
Crisis management
IndiGo said its board of directors had met on the first day of the disruptions and formed a crisis management group (CMG) that included chairman Vikram Singh Mehta, board members Gregg Saretsky, Mike Whitaker and Amitabh Kant, and CEO Elbers.
“This group has been meeting regularly to monitor the situation and is being constantly updated by the management of the measures being undertaken to restore normal operations,” an IndiGo spokesperson said.
In an internal video message to staff, Elbers said that “step by step, we are getting back”.
He added: “We have been able to execute the cancellations at an earlier stage so that the customers do not show up at the airport in case their flights are cancelled.”