Addressing the passengers in a video message amid the unprecedented situation where the airline had to cancel over a thousand flights in the last three days, the CEO apologised to the customers, saying the situation is a result of various causes and the company is taking a few fresh measures to address the situation.
"We have experienced severe operational disruptions for the past few days. Since then, the crisis continued to aggravate, with today, December 5th, being the most severely impacted day with the number of cancellations well over a thousand or more than half of our number of daily flights," Elbers stated.
"I, on behalf of all of us at Indigo, would like to extend our sincerest apologies for the major inconvenience this has caused to many of our customers on account of delays or cancellations," he added.
The CEO of the airline, having over 60 per cent share in the domestic aviation market, said that amid the chaos and a lot of miscommunication, the company has decided on some lines of action, including detailed communication through major channels, and providing travel facilities to those who are stranded at various airports.
"The situation is a result of various causes, yet for you as a customer, it's important how we as Indigo address this. We have defined three lines of action," Elbers emphasised.
The first measure is customer communication, and for this, he said that messages have been sent on social media, and the company will extend more detailed communication with information on refunds, cancellations and other customer support measures.
He further said that the company had stepped up our call centre capacity.
"Secondly, due to yesterday's situation, we had customers stranded mostly at the nation's largest airport. Our focus was for all of them to be able to travel today itself, which will be achieved. For this, we also ask customers whose flights are cancelled not to come to airports as notifications are sent," he noted.
The third step is the cancellations that were made for today are to align the crew and planes to be where they need to start tomorrow morning afresh.
Earlier measures of the last few days, regrettably, have proven not to be enough, the CEO admitted.
"So we've decided today for a reboot of all our systems and schedules, resulting in the highest number of cancellations so far, but imperative for progressive improvements starting from tomorrow," he highlighted.
"With these actions, we expect tomorrow to have cancellations below 1,000, " Elbers said.
He thanked the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for providing specific flight duty time limitation (FDTL) implementation relief during this high time.
"Still, there's lots of work in progress, but going forward from here, in alignment with the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the DGCA, we do expect to further improve every day," the CEO noted.
Meanwhile, the government said it has decided to institute a high-level inquiry into the massive IndiGo disruption, which will examine what went wrong at the airline, determine accountability wherever required for appropriate actions, and recommend measures to prevent similar disruptions in the future -- ensuring that passengers do not face such hardships again.
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