Why IndiGo is cancelling 30 flights every day

The Gurugram-based budget carrier, IndiGo operates over 1,300 flights per day with a fleet of 210 planes. Last few days haven't been great for the carrier as it has been forced to cancel a number of flights on a consistent basis due to bad weather, partial closure of Bengaluru airport due to the Air Show and most disturbingly, an acute shortage of pilots. Things have gone from bad to worse and the airline cancelled as many as 130 flights on Friday - one tenth of its fleet. "IndiGo has cancelled around 130 flights for Friday as it continues to face shortage of pilots," a source was quoted as saying by PTI. 

A query sent to IndiGo spokesperson and also to its chief operating officer Wolfgang Prock-Shauer by the news agency remained unanswered. Since last week, the airline has cancelled many flights as rain and hailstorm hit the Delhi-NCR region last week.

On Thursday, IndiGo had cancelled 70 flights, citing reasons like planned cancellations and partial closure of the Bengaluru airport due to the Air Show.

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"As stated earlier, the anticipated cancellations are 30 flights per day. The operations will be completely normalised by the start of the summer schedule from March 31. Additionally, a NOTAM in Bangalore started effective today (February 14), which caused additional 40 flight cancellations, rescheduling for which had been completed a month back and passengers were informed and reaccomodated accordingly," the airline had said in its earlier statement.

On Wednesday, the airline had cancelled 49 flights. 

"The cancellations on February 13 were caused by several factors like anticipated weather conditions on February 14 and NOTAMS at various airports. This resulted in extended duty times which then made it necessary to re-roster our crew and optimise our operations," it said in a statement on Wednesday.

The airline has also announced that it will curtail its schedule for the remaining period of this month by "approximately 30 flights a day". It said that this decision has been taken to stabilise its operation and adjust crew rosters due to the reasons mentioned above.

The national capital region had witnessed another spell on rain on Thursday morning, even though it wasn't as intense as it was on February 7. Areas like Ayanagar, Narela, Ghaziabad, Greater Noida, and Faridabad witnessed a hailstorm and operations of many airline carriers were affected. According to the IMD, Delhi recorded 1.3 mm of rain till 8.30 a.m. with humidity levels reaching 96 per cent.