A four-member committee investigating the issue of large-scale flight cancellations in the country’s largest airline IndiGo has submitted its report to aviation regulator DGCA. A senior officer gave this information.
Sanjay K., Joint Director General of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). This committee was formed on December 5 under the chairmanship of Brahmane. The committee was given the responsibility to comprehensively review the circumstances due to which hundreds of IndiGo flights were canceled for several days.
The official said the inquiry committee submitted its report to the DGCA on Friday evening. Sources said that copies of the report were given to Civil Aviation Minister. Rammohan Naidu and Civil Aviation Secretary Sameer Kumar Sinha’s office. However, details of the report’s findings have not yet been made public.
Apart from Brahmane, this committee included DGCA Deputy Director General Amit Gupta, Senior Flight Operations Inspector Captain Kapil Manglik and Flight Operations Inspector Captain Rampal.
Indigo flights were canceled on a large scale in the initial week of this month. During this period, more than 1,600 flights had to be canceled in one day. Apart from this, a large number of flights were delayed by several hours due to which passengers had to face problems at airports across the country.
Indigo had not prepared in time to implement the new norms related to deployment and rest of crew members, which led to this widespread standoff.
Following the flight disruptions, DGCA had directed IndiGo to reduce the number of its winter flights by 10 per cent. Additionally, show cause notices were also issued to the airline’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Peter Albers and Chief Operating Officer (COO) Isidre Porcaras.
The regulator had said in the order related to the formation of the committee that prima facie this situation points to serious shortcomings in internal monitoring, operational preparedness and regulatory compliance planning, due to which an independent investigation became necessary.
DGCA had said that it had given instructions from time to time to IndiGo to prepare for the implementation of crew deployment rules. But the airline failed to properly assess crew availability, conduct timely training and make changes to the duty roster.
The amended rules were implemented in two phases. Its first phase came into effect from July 1 and the second phase from November 1.
DGCA says that due to lack of implementation of the second phase, 170 to 200 flights were canceled every day, causing huge inconvenience to the passengers.
