By Tannistha Dey
IndiGo chairman, Vikram Singh Mehta, has denied that his company aimed to cause chaos in their operation that resulted in a major meltdown last week and that attempted to sway the government concerning new rules on Flight Duty Time Limitation. This came when Mehta had finally broken his silence concerning the affair.
In a video message, he apologised to passengers and added that he has been waiting for a period when operations are stabilised before he can communicate. “Our first duty was to support the CEO and his team and restore operations,” he said.
“There were multiple issues that led to these disruptions. These were tech issues, some issues related to our winter schedules, adverse weather conditions, and flow in the air traffic system, as well as issues related to our new crew rostering policy,” said Mehta.
To minimise flight crew fatigue, with longer rest periods and limited late-night duties, the new FDTL rules were introduced in phases as of July 1 and November 1. IndiGo faced maximum difficulties in the second phase, where either increasing flight crew members or cutting flight operations was mandatory. The DGCA subsequently ascribed “misjudgement and gaps in planning with regard to flight crew requirements in the new rules” for this disarray, which IndiGo had admitted to the aviation regulator.
Commenting on criticism of how effective it has been, Mehta described it as an “incorrect” assertion that this body has been disengaged. “The Board and its Risk Management Committee were closely involved for many months, receiving updates from management on a regular basis” about FDTL. There was no indication in this report that it knew of IndiGo being underprepared for the November 1 launch.
Members of this board are co-founder Rahul Bhatia, former G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant, former SEBI chairman M. Damodaran, former FAA administrator Michael Whitaker, former Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa, and senior lawyer Pallavi Shroff.
On Wednesday, Mehta reported that “an emergency meeting of our board was invoked on day one of this disruption, and a crisis management team has been working in close coordination with our airline’s management.” He also noted that “our operations are stabilising ahead of expectations, with IndiGo running over 1,800 flights on Tuesday, with our on-time performance above 80 percent.”
The DGCA has eased certain FDTL regulations for IndiGo to regain normalcy and has also started an investigation into this disruption. Describing it as “a black mark on the otherwise spotless record of the airline”, Mehta said that IndiGo would undertake a root cause analysis of the matter and also involve a third-party technical consultant in order to help resolve this issue. “We will make sure that such a disruption will never happen again,” he said.