IndiGo cancels 112 flights at Hyderabad Airport, passengers continue to suffer

Hyderabad: Passengers at Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) continue to have a harrowing time as IndiGo cancelled 112 flights on Monday.

For the seventh consecutive day, the airline’s services remained disrupted. The cancellations on Monday include 58 arrivals and 54 departures.

With no signs of normalcy returning to IndiGo’s operations at RGIA, thousands of passengers continue to suffer. For the fifth consecutive day, the number of cancellations was over 100. More than 600 flights have been cancelled at RGIA since December 2.

As many as 126 flights were cancelled on Sunday (December 7). The highest number of flights (155) was cancelled on December 5, while 144 flights were cancelled on December 6.

Hundreds of passengers remained stranded due to cancellations. Angry passengers were seen making enquiries.

The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) stepped up security at the airport as a precautionary measure to prevent any untoward incident.

The cancellations on key domestic routes severely disrupted the travel plans of the passengers for the seventh consecutive day. Cancellation of departures and arrivals on key domestic routes like Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Visakhapatnam, Goa, Madurai and Bhubaneswar severely inconvenienced passengers.

IndiGo on Sunday announced that it resumed operations at 137 of its 138 destinations. The airline said it was on track to operate 1,650 flights for the day, compared to 1,500 flights on December 6. It also stated that its on-time performance had risen from 30 per cent on December 6 to 75 per cent on December 7.

The airline also announced a full waiver on cancellations and rescheduling requests for bookings till December 15.

IndiGo has attributed the crisis to the new Flight Duty Time Limit (FDTL) norms. These rules, implemented in two phases from July and November, increase weekly rest to 48 hours, extend night-duty definitions, and cap night landings at two. The norms were rolled out following the Delhi High Court orders.

On a request by IndiGo, the aviation regulator DGCA granted temporary relaxations until February 10.

IANS