Around 12.45pm on Sunday, a group of enraged passengers started banging on the glass partition at the IndiGo counter at the Calcutta airport.
The number of cancellations and delays on IndiGo flights reduced on Sunday, but there was no sign of an end to the chaos and harassment of thousands of passengers.
“We are expecting the chaos to continue for another week. Now, more than cancellations, we are seeing the problem of missing luggage and refunds,” said an official of the Calcutta airport.
Till 8pm on Sunday, 55 IndiGo flights to and from Calcutta were cancelled, said airport officials. Among them, 45 were departures and 10 arrivals.
“There were four flights of IndiGo arriving in Calcutta that were delayed by over 30 minutes. No departure flight was delayed,” said the official. He said that 129 IndiGo flights operated at the Calcutta airport till 8pm on Sunday, 67 took off, and 62 arrived.
But passenger grievances seemed to have increased.
“IndiGo hai hai” slogans rang out in the air in front of the airline’s counter inside gate 3C of the departure level. There were too many people outside and too few airline staff. “Call your seniors. Because you are not competent,” shouted one man.
Two Central Industrial Security Force jawans came running in and restrained the agitating crowd. But only momentarily. Tempers kept flaring up now and then.
Around half an hour later, a carrier employee came to offer tea and biscuits to people waiting in the queue. A young man almost charged at him. “You think we are beggars that you are offering biscuits? I have been stuck for three days. Arrange for a flight ticket. I don’t need your biscuits,” the man shouted.
Soon, a sizeable crowd gathered behind him. The employee tried explaining that he was also having to work overtime because of the crisis. But it failed to cut any ice.
Again, a couple of CISF jawans arrived and separated the two groups.
Around 11.30am, close to 100 people were waiting at the counter. The crowd swelled as the day progressed. Among those waiting were Mithun Asha, 40, and his mother, Asha, 71. Mithun is a doctor in Pune. The two went on a trip to Guangzhou, the Chinese city recently linked to Calcutta by a direct flight.
They landed in Calcutta on the morning of December 5 and were booked on a flight to Pune the same day. What was supposed to be a two-hour stopover turned into a three-day ordeal. “I have had four flights cancelled. Every day, I come to the airport with my mother early in the morning, only to be rebooked on another flight that eventually gets cancelled,” said Mithun.
“My mother suffers from anxiety, hypertension and a host of other ailments. She is having panic attacks,” said Mithun. After a four-hour wait at the airport on Sunday, the two were eventually booked on a flight to Mumbai, scheduled at 3.15am on Monday. His mother took ill at the airport and needed medical attention, said Mithun.
For most passengers, a longer stay in the city meant additional hotel expenses.
Rajkot resident Kirthibhai Chauhan had come to Calcutta from Ahmedabad with his wife and daughter. That was November 28. They were supposed to fly out on December 4. Since then, the Chauhans have been booked on four flights, all of which were cancelled.
“We have booked Tatkal train tickets on the Howrah-Ahmedabad Superfast Express, scheduled to leave Howrah at 11.05pm on Monday. But we are on the waiting list. I don’t know how, but we have to get on that train,” said Chauhan, who is staying at a hotel in central Calcutta.
Srijoni Ghosh, who is pursuing her higher studies, has an entrance test at a tech institute in Mangalore from 10am on Monday. On Sunday afternoon, she waited for over two hours at the IndiGo counter before she was able to speak to a member of the staff. Her flight was originally scheduled at 3.10pm on Sunday. She got a cancellation message on Saturday evening. She rushed to the airport and was rebooked on another flight, this one via Hyderabad, slated to depart Calcutta on Sunday night. Around 1.30am on Sunday, she received another message that the Hyderabad-bound flight was also cancelled.
She was booked on another flight via Bhubaneswar on Sunday night. “I am supposed to reach Mangalore early on Monday. I am just praying that I can reach Mangalore in time for the exam,” said Srijoni, who lives in Salt Lake.
But the situation is gradually improving. The scale of disruptions has gone down, and several passengers said their flights were uneventful, even pleasant, on Sunday.
“We travelled from Nagpur to Calcutta on IndiGo on Sunday. Gripped by apprehensions following media reports for the past three days, we reached the airport at 5.30am for the 7.30am flight. From check-in to our pre-departure, the experience was surprisingly smooth. We landed in Calcutta 15 minutes before time and got our luggage promptly. The IndiGo staff were exemplary at both airports,” said a Calcuttan.
IndiGo said on Sunday that following a meeting of its board of directors on the first day of the disruptions, a crisis management group (CMG) was set up “comprising, amongst others, the chairman, Vikram Singh Mehta; board directors, Gregg Saretsky, Mike Whitaker and Amitabh Kant, and the CEO Pieter 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.... The objective of these meetings and exchanges is to address, as quickly as practically possible, the hardships suffered by our customers and other stakeholders while also restoring operational integrity across the airline’s network expeditiously,” said an IndiGo spokesperson.
“Following the recent operational disruptions, IndiGo confirms that we are establishing further significant and sustained improvements across our network. The first step to this was taken yesterday (Saturday), today, the next steps have been taken on this with fewer cancellations and a higher on-time performance. Also, cancellations were made at an earlier stage, allowing us to inform our customers more timely timelier,” the airline said in a statement on Sunday.
“We are making very significant progress in restoring our flight schedules and strengthening our customer support systems,” it said.
IndiGo claimed that on December 7, it operated over 1,650 flights, up from over 1,500 on Saturday.
The on-time performance was also 75 per cent, up from 30 per cent on Saturday, it said.