Centre may curtail IndiGo flight operations in winter after meltdown

THe authorities is provision to curtail indigo plant’s day-to-day flight of steps operations in the ongoing winter schedule in the wake of a major meltdown, officials aware of the matter said, on a day when the airline in its reply to a showcause notice by the aviation regulator attributed the mass cancellations to a “compounding effect of multiple factors”.The airline operates 2,200 flights a day in the winter schedule. Though there was no confirmation on the number of flights that will be cut, some officials said at least 100 a day could be pulled back.“Looking at the current status of the airline, there may soon be a reduction in the daily approved IndiGo’s flight numbers for the current winter schedule operations. A final decision is yet to be taken on the number of flights to be reduced,” an aviation ministry official confirmed to HT. In this year’s winter schedule, IndiGo received regulatory approval to operate 6% more flights than in the summer schedule even as it sought to postpone flight duty rules.DGCA confirmed it received IndiGo’s reply on Monday, signed jointly by the airline’s Chief Executive Officer Pieter Elbers and Chief Operating Officer Isidre Porqueras.The regulator said IndiGo attributed the meltdown to a combination of “minor technical glitches,” schedule changes linked to the onset of the winter season, adverse weather conditions, increased congestion in the aviation system, and the implementation of updated crew-rostering norms under the Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) Phase II framework.It requested additional time to conduct a comprehensive Root Cause Analysis (RCA), noting that DGCA’s own procedures allow a fifteen-day timeline for responding to show-cause notices.The airline has committed to submitting the full analysis once it has completed the exercise.The regulator said it is currently studying the submission and that an appropriate enforcement decision will follow.In its response, IndiGo said it is “realistically not possible to pinpoint the exact cause(s)” of the crisis at this stage due to the “complexity and scale of its operations.”According to the airline’s response, the disruptions began building in early December, when the confluence of these factors dragged down IndiGo’s on-time network performance and cascaded into widespread crew unavailability.By December 5, the airline resorted to what it described as the “drastic measure” of “rebooting” its network, cancelling a substantial number of flights to recover stranded passengers, reduce airport congestion and reposition crew and aircraft.IndiGo said this reset allowed operations to “progressively stabilise and begin normalising from December 6.”