Aviation regulator DGCA on Wednesday set up an eight-member oversight committee to monitor the day-to-day functioning of IndiGo, tightening the screws further on the airline a day after it reduced its winter flight schedule.

The committee has been mandated to keep a watch on IndiGo’s pilot strength, fleet, crew utilisation and flight cancellations and delays, among other things. It will have to submit daily reports to the aviation ministry.

The panel has as members DGCA deputy chief flight operations inspector, Captain Vikram Sharma, senior flight operations inspectors Kapil Mangalik, V.P. Singh, Apoorva Agarwal, Swati Loomba and Aman Suhag, and flight operations inspectors Nitya Jain and N.J. Singh.

The DGCA also asked the IndiGo CEO to appear before it on Thursday with a complete report on what caused the crisis that led to the cancellation of thousands of flights in the past few days and left lakhs of passengers stranded. The fiasco has been largely attributed to the failure of India’s mainstay airline to align its operations with the government’s new Flight Duty Time Limitations.

The oversight team will supervise IndiGo’s fleet, the total number of pilots, network details, flights per day and available crew, total number of sectors affected on account of crew shortage, standby crew per day and per base (cockpit and cabin), hourly, daily and monthly untilisation of crew, employees receiving training, split duties, and all unplanned leaves per day.

In a separate directive, the DGCA sought the appearance of IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers at its office on Thursday to submit a report, along with comprehensive data and updates, relating to the recent operational disruptions.

Apart from the CEO, other senior airline officials from all relevant departments have been instructed to attend the meeting with the aviation regulator.

The DGCA has asked IndiGo about the measures taken to prevent roster shortages and its efforts towards restoring operations fully, the progress in re-accommodating affected passengers, priority handling of vulnerable passengers, updated position of pilot and cabin crew strength and the recruitment and training plan for the upcoming months.

IndiGo on Wednesday submitted its revised flight schedules to the DGCA after the government trimmed its winter timetable by 10 per cent.

In a statement, IndiGo lauded all its 65,000 employees and said they were working to address the issues and “restore normalcy in operations”.

Delhi High Court on Wednesday pulled up the Centre on the IndiGo crisis, asking why the situation was allowed to fester. The court also directed the government and IndiGo to take steps to adequately compensate affected passengers.

“The question is why, at all, this crisis arose and what have you been doing?” the court asked the government, also flagging the surge in air ticket prices following the crisis.

Other airlines

Air India has been running additional flights since December 5, and till Tuesday the carrier had operated 32 such flights. Air India said it had implemented the government-mandated fare caps since December 6.

SpiceJet said it planned to introduce up to 100 additional daily flights in the winter schedule, subject to regulatory approvals.