UAE passengers faced major travel disruption on Friday after Indian airline IndiGo cancelled hundreds of flights as it grapples with a “serious operational crisis”.
Travellers flying between the Emirates and India said they faced lengthy delays and saw flights grounded, with soaring air fares preventing them making alternative arrangements.
Air travel turmoil has gripped India this week as IndiGo struggles to adapt to strict new safety rules rolled out by the country's aviation authorities, including limits on pilot flying times and tighter restrictions on their operation of night flights.
The aviation ministry on Friday put the new policy on hold in an effort to ease the travel chaos as IndiGo warned it might not be able to restore routes “overnight”.
“My flight from Mumbai to Dubai was cancelled. I'm hearing delays will continue until February,” said Manisha Apte, a passenger in India. “It's best to change airline bookings but all airlines are pushing up their rates.”
It was a similarly bleak situation for Sapna Mohan, who was travelling to Dubai from India.
“My flight to Delhi from Dubai was delayed by five hours. I was told it was because of a major delay in incoming flights. I couldn’t book another airline because the rates have shot up.”
Crowds of disgruntled passengers voiced their frustration at airports across India, while many others took to social media to take aim at the airline.
The airline on Friday said it “deeply apologised” for the disruption in a message to passengers posted on social media.
“While this will not get resolved overnight, we assure you that we will do everything in our capacity to help you in the meantime and to bring our operations back to normal at the earliest.
“We are known for our reliability but in these last few days we have a serious operational crisis. For many customers, their journeys were cancelled, and many of you were at the airports with long wait times and little information.”
India's Civil Aviation Minister, Ram Mohan Naidu, said on Friday that the flight duty time limits had been “placed in abeyance with immediate effect”.
“Without compromising on air safety, this decision has been taken solely in the interest of passengers, especially senior citizens, students, patients and others who rely on timely air travel for essential needs,” the minister said in a statement.
He said his ministry expected schedules to stabilise and return to normal on Saturday.
IndiGo has a 64 per cent share of the Indian market and is embarking on an ambitious plan to expand rapidly abroad. About 90 per cent of the Indian population lives within 100km of an Indigo-served airport.
Last week, 200 IndiGo planes were affected when Airbus issued an alert for an urgent upgrade for 6,000 aircraft worldwide.
India is one of the world's fastest growing aviation markets, reaching 500,000 daily flyers last month for the first time.
