E-Paper
IndiGo chaos: Passengers bear brunt of flight delays in Chandigarh, Jammu
Passengers take to social media to vent their ire as they await updates from country’s largest airline through the day, say “worst experience”.
Passengers across multiple airports in the northern region continued to face inconvenience for the third day on Thursday as IndiGo’s nationwide operations remained disrupted due to large-scale delays and cancellations.
IndiGo, the country’s largest airline known for its punctuality, cancelled more than 300 domestic and international flights by afternoon, impacting travel plans of hundreds of passengers. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is meeting the airline officials to discuss the situation.
At the Shaheed Bhagat Singh International Airport in Chandigarh, 14 of the 15 IndiGo flights scheduled to depart on December 4 were delayed. They included the Chandigarh-Mumbai flight, scheduled to depart at 5.20 am that left at 8.05am. A flight to Chennai, which was scheduled for 7.20 am was rescheduled to 3.55pm. Flights to Leh and Ahmedabad, scheduled to depart at 11.45am and 12.05pm, respectively, were yet to depart at 3.30pm.
IndiGo flights were also arriving behind schedule. The 7.30am flight from Bengaluru landed at 8.54am.
Passengers took to social media to vent their ire as they awaited updates from the airlines.
Ravindra Soni, a passenger, posted on X, “@IndiGo6E my flight from Goa to Chandigarh (6E724) at 6pm, is cancelled by IndiGo airlines. This has been my worst experience. I was put on hold for 30 minutes before the call to IndiGo disconnected. I tried the 6E AI Assistant, but in vain.”
Another harried passenger, Gourav Singh, said, “IndiGo at it again. No announcements, no accountability. Same old airlines never learn.”
At Jammu airport, passengers expressed frustration as flights to Delhi were repeatedly delayed. A passenger said, “My flight from Jammu to Delhi has been delayed by four hours. I don’t know if the flight will depart today.”
Another passenger added, “The flight to Delhi, which was initially scheduled for 10.30am, has been rescheduled to 3.30pm.”
Of the total 11 IndiGo flights from Jammu, one was cancelled, eight delayed and two arrived on time on Thursday.
Jammu airport director Devendra Yadav said that since December 1, when the DGCA restricted duty hours of pilots of passenger planes, IndiGo’s software monitoring roster of pilots developed a glitch. As a result, the availability of pilots was affected.
“We informed passengers via SMS and there’s always a contingency plan in place. We have enough seating capacity in the waiting area and the airlines concerned also has readjustment plans,” he said.
With inputs from HTC, Jammu
