IndiGo recovered faster from its schedule setback last December than some of the other airlines in other countries have, chief executive officer Pieter Elbers said on Wednesday.
Elbers claimed the airline has paid refunds to all eligible passengers, but did not specify how many got the money.
“Every airline in the world, especially those operating in a highly competitive environment, has the focus always on optimising the network. Other airlines in the world have gone through similar processes, with similar disruptions at different times. So, we learnt from it, started to rebuild from it,” Elbers said in Hyderabad.
“...Airlines throughout the world, Southwest, Ryanair, Delta, all of them have gone through similar processes and no one is proud of it. But everyone is learning from it, and so are we. What we need to do is incorporate all our learnings in our processes going forth, make it more resilient, see how we can take all the lessons from it,” he said at the Wings India 2026 aviation summit in Hyderabad.
“Other airlines have taken more time to come back,” Elbers said.
Hundreds of thousands of IndiGo passengers were stranded across India in early December when the airline cancelled around 4,500 flights between December 2 and 9. Thousands of passengers did not have their bags delivered after arriving at the destination.
However, Elbers claimed the disruptions were for three days, December 3, 4 and 5.
“When it comes to the December disruptions, it was a compound effect of multiple factors.... IndiGo connects 96 to 97 cities and in that system, everything has to come together in the right place, right time and right proportion. That’s how IndiGo operates. In the overall scheme of things, there will always be disturbances. In this case, the disturbance was too much and we were not being able to deal with it,” he said.
“Between December 3, 4, 5, December 4 was the day which had the most customer impact. We were then focused on the immediate issue. One was to deal with the customer grievances, as people got stranded at different locations and we had to get everyone back. Then, the focus shifted from immediate action to the refunds. All the refunds were done,” Elbers said.
Asked about the amount of refunds given and the number of passengers who got the benefit, the IndiGo CEO did not comment.
He said the airline was focused on rebuilding the network. “Reinstating the network was done in a very quick and commendable manner. When the collapse happened on December 5, we said we will be back between December 10 and 15. Reality was, on December 9, we got back with full operation,” Elbers said.
Elbers said the focus had been on rebuilding that network and, at the same time, analysing.
“Today, we are back to our 3.7-3.8 lakh customers. Around Christmas, we had close to 3.9.lakh customers back, flying with us, and now we need to make sure that we update our processes, systems and structures,” he said.
“Our focus has been to really make sure that we address situations when it comes to IndiGo customer needs, rebuilding our network, and at the same time, to do our own analysis.... We are engaging with the DGCA. The DGCA is the regulator and gives us their sort of feedback, and we take full cognisance,” Elbers said.
The airline plans to add one aircraft every week for the next decade and expects international operations to account for around 40 per cent of its total capacity by 2030.