New Delhi, Dec 18 (UNI) Weeks after facing widespread flight cancellations and chaos across airports,IndiGo Airlines Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Pieter Elbers told employees that the “worst is behind us.”
In a video message to staff, Elbers thanked the IndiGo workforce for their efforts and said that on December 9 he had announced that the airline’s operations had begun stabilising.
He said the airline restored 2,200 flights on Thursday, adding that the past two weeks had been extremely challenging.
Elbers urged employees to now focus on three priorities: resilience, root cause analysis, and rebuilding.
Elaborating further, he said the airline’s immediate focus is on solidifying operations and ensuring stability as the bad weather and IROPS (Irregular Operations) season begins this week.
“What we witnessed seems to be a compounding effect of several factors, and everyone wants answers,” he said.
The CEO stated that the airline needs a full-scale analysis, for which an external aviation expert has been appointed by the Board to conduct a comprehensive Root Cause Analysis.
The root cause analysis and the inputs from the staff will help the airline “rebuild itself in a better way”. “Let these three days (December 3-December 5) not define what we have collectively built over 19 years,” the CEO said.
IndiGo experienced a near-total operational meltdown, with over 5,000 flights cancelled in the first 10 days.
The airline had informed the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) that the disruptions were caused by planning gaps in pilot rostering and misjudgements in assessing pilot availability following new DGCA rules on pilot rest and duty hours, which came into effect on November 1.
