by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz
New Delhi/Mumbai : Budget passenger carrier IndiGo on Tuesday said that it is “adjusting” some flight operations to deal with expected weather related disruptions in the coming days.
However, industry insiders say that the airline has cancelled about 30 flights on Tuesday and over 30 flights on Monday.
According to industry sources, the airline had cancelled around 50 flights during the last weekend due to shortage of pilots which, but IndiGo said that was due to a hailstorm that lashed the national capital and surrounding areas.
“IndiGo is slightly adjusting its flight schedule in the coming days by approximately 30 flights per day,” the airline said in a statement on Tuesday.
“This is in order to stabilize the network and operations impacted due to various ongoing Notams (Notice to Airmen) and predicted bad weather in the coming days.”
According to the airline, in order to avoid inconvenience, these adjustments are being made in advance.
“They are being accommodated close to their original flight schedule. These adjustments amount to 1 to 2 per cent of the originally planned number of flights,” the statement said.
At present, IndiGo, with its fleet of over 200 aircraft, offers over 1,300 daily flights and connects 52 domestic and 16 international destinations.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Large Enterprise
New Delhi : Budget passenger carrier IndiGo will operate daily non-stop flights between Delhi and Istanbul effective March 20, with Airbus A321 aircraft.
According to the company, Istanbul will become its 16th international destination. The airline has opened bookings for the flight with promotional fare starting at Rs 23,999.
“It is our privilege to be the first Indian carrier to fly into Turkey. Istanbul is one the most attractive tourist cities in the world and the gateway from Asia into Europe,” William Boulter, Chief Commercial Officer, IndiGo, said in a company statement on Friday.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
Indigo President Aditya Ghoshs
By Shantanu Guha Ray,
Indigo President Aditya Ghoshs final hours played out in a room in Gurgaon, a city of seven golf courses surrounded by apartment towers sprouting like concrete weeds.
In aviation circles, many likened the move to the tagline of India’s most successful airline: Before Time Departure.
The plan to replace him was unanimous and followed a tumultuous year of crises that Ghosh masked behind a thick smokescreen, with reasons ranging from his presiding over a decision to buy cheaper aircraft, inability to handle crisis emerging out of Pratt and Whitney engines that promised 16 per cent fuel savings but eventually led to the grounding of a large number of aircraft, to the loss in a courtroom battle over moving its operations to another terminal, and customer dissatisfaction over the airline’s operations.
At the end, Ghosh, a fitness freak and marathon runner who once told a corporate gathering in Delhi that he needs no marketing help because “my product is the best”, had to walk out of the company he nurtured for almost a decade.
Ghosh basked in the glory of success, one in every two passengers in India flies on Indigo.
He did not tell his colleagues whether he erred being stubborn and whether he should have taken some instant, bold decisions to hype the image of his company. A friend — explaining the myriad ways of marketing economics — told Ghosh why image-building was important for Indigo and how a top Indian conglomerate is contemplating hiring a former cricket captain for its campaign in a faraway nation to counter negative publicity from rivals who had hired a family of international cricketers to bolster their cause.
But it was clear to many that Ghosh did not care much about the image of the airline, as long as profits soared. This January, India’s biggest budget airline said its profits rose by 56 percent at Rs 762 crore. What was surprising was that a significant portion of the margin was boosted by foreign exchange gains and credits from Pratt & Whitney to compensate for engine glitches that grounded Indigo’s Airbus planes.
Senior officials of Pratt and Whitney — in their representations to Directorate General of Civil Aviation — explained to the regulator the difference between air worthiness and air safety and why new aircraft engines would have “teething” problems for at least one million hours. They also cited examples where pilots of Indigo and Go Air explained why troubles in engines are a routine occurrence in the aviation business.
But it did not cut much ice for a large chunk of India’s estimated 49 million passengers, many taking to social media to vent their ire over such engine failures. Some cases of Indigo aircrafts being forced to do emergency landings on single engines went viral on social media.
In India, where governments have fallen due to high prices of lowly onions, perception is important, Ghosh was told by his colleagues. And Indigo was not even explaining to its passengers the crisis of engine failures. Indigo did not care.
If this was one of the biggest problems for Indigo, the other was the airline’s defiant attitude to the orders of the Ministry of Civil Aviation to shift its operations to another terminal. Indigo protested and the matter went to court. Company insiders said Ghosh impressed upon the board not to shift because of high aerobridge costs in the T2 terminal. Eventually, the airline lost its cases in the Delhi High Court and subsequently in the Supreme Court.
There were other issues that bothered Indigo, especially the case in which the airline suo-moto announced a bid for Air India and then deciding to pull out once the terms and conditions and the bidding criterion for the Maharaja were made public. IndiGo’s announcement to bid for Air India saw the airline’s stocks take a tumble.
But the biggest blow to Indigo’s image took place last November when security staff manhandled a passenger at New Delhi airport, the incident prompting the government to launch an investigation into the ground operations of the airline. In a video, widely shared on social media and televised on local news channels, two IndiGo staff members were seen pinning a passenger down on the ground after an argument on the tarmac. The incident sparked a public outcry across India and even triggered jokes taunting Indigo ground staff for their misbehaviour.
Indigo initially ignored the incident but following the probe by the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Ghosh sent a seven-page report to the minister and explained through multiple screenshots from the video to explain the reasons behind the incident. Eventually, Ghosh had to apologise. “We find this incident extremely regrettable and wish that we would have handled this differently. Whatever may have been the provocation, whether verbal or physical abuse, we could have tried to display more restraint,” Ghosh said.
But what irked the government was his continued defence of some of the actions of his employees which he said were taken to ensure the passenger’s safety.
Now that Ghosh is out of Indigo, efforts are being made to bring about wholesale change of the airline’s corporate culture. His exit as the airline’s president raises some important questions about Indigo’s future, including who will help the airline retain its lead over the rest in the Indian skies. The IndiGo Board is to meet on May 2 to announce its results for the quarter ending March 31, 2018. Besides growing in size, the airline is also looking at an overhaul of strategy, shifting gears from having a single aircraft variety to wide-body aircraft for long-haul operations.
It will all happen without Ghosh.
For the record, the airline’s promoter Rahul Bhatia appointed himself as the interim Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and circulated a letter that said the post will eventually go to Gregory Taylor, who had a previous stint at IndiGo and helped shape the fortunes of United Airlines and US Airways. Taylor was inducted as a Senior Advisor in the company, reporting directly to Bhatia.
(Shantanu Guha Ray is with Business Television India. He can be contacted at shantanu.ray@btvi.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Buzz
New Delhi : A day after the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) directed the grounding of 11 A320neo aircraft, budget carrier Indigo cancelled 47 flights on various routes, according to the information available on the airline’s website, while GoAir had to cancel some flights originating out of eight centres.
Indigo said passengers were given the option to either choose another flight at no additional cost or cancel their booking and get a full refund. GoAir too said the same thing.
In an statement on Tuesday, the airline said: “IndiGo has cancelled certain flights due to the grounding of our aircraft further to the DGCA directions which has been issued in the interest of safety. While we understand that this may cause inconvenience to some of our passengers, given that we have multiple flights to the same destination, we are proactively re-accommodating all our affected passengers on other flights.”
“GoAir has complied with the DGCA directive by grounding the late serial number PW GTF engines. This has resulted in the cancellation of some flights originating out of 8 centres. Flight schedules are being altered to accommodate those affected. Alternate arrangements are made or offered to minimise impact and inconvenience. In cases where appropriate, free cancellation and re-booking options have been made available,” a GoAir spokesperson said.
GoAir, however, clarified that none of its flights between Delhi and Mumbai got cancelled.
“GoAir has cancelled some flights from eight cities that include, Bengaluru, Cochin, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bhubhaneshwar, Kolkata, Lucknow and Delhi,” the spokesperson added.
Citing safety concerns, the aviation industry regulator asked IndiGo and GoAir to ground a total of 11 A320neo aircraft fitted with Pratt & Whitney 1100 engines.
Out ot the 11, eight are operated by IndiGo while GoAir operates three, the DGCA said in a statement.
With this, all the A320neo aircraft with PW1100 engines beyond serial number 450 have been taken off operation in India.
DGCA said: “Both IndiGo and GoAir have been told not to refit these engines, which are spare with them in their inventory.”
The directive came immediately after an IndiGo A320neo VT-ITA flight reported engine failure and had to make an emergency landing at Ahmedabad following take off from the same airport on Monday.
Previously, the DGCA had ordered grounding of three aircraft in IndiGo’s A320neo fleet after the European Aviation Safety Agency issued an emergency airworthiness directive regarding similar A320neos on February 9, 2018.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, Corporate Reports
New Delhi : In a strongly worded report a Parliamentary Standing Committee has slammed Indigo for manhandling of a passenger by its staff and says airlines serve awful food and do not efficiently man check-in counters.
It also suggested to the Union government to fix limits for airline tickets and cancellation charges.
But Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha said on Friday that the domestic airline industry followed the “global practice of dynamic pricing”.
The Minister defended the industry against the latest observations made by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture which said airlines were over-pricing their tickets.
“Globally, airlines follow the practice of dynamic pricing and we did not find that our airlines were doing anything different from the global practices,” Sinha told reporters.
“There are less than 1 per cent of all the prices that actually go above the average… We have agencies such as DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) and CCI (Competition Commission of India)… If anyone feels something wrong is happening, they can approach these agencies and action will be taken.”
The 26-page report “Issues related to improving consumers’ satisfaction of airlines” was prepared after consulting with Civil Aviation officials and various industry stakeholders.
“The Committee notes that around festivals and for bookings made closer to the date of travel, some airlines are charging more than 10 times of the advance booking fare. The Committee observes that this is arbitrary. A deregulatory environment does not mean unlimited freedom of exploitation,” the report said.
The panel said the pricing mechanisms applicable in the “developed countries may not be suitable for India”.
It noted that even after a 50 per cent reduction of the ATF (aviation turbine fuel) prices, the airlines had not passed on the benefit of reduction in ATF prices to the consumers.
The committee also said cancellation charges levied by private airlines were arbitrarily set.
Taking note of manhandling of a passenger by Indigo staff, the committee said that recently there were many incidents of discourteous and rude behavior by airlines staff, both ground staff and cabin crew. “Some of them were reported in the media and a large number of them went unreported. While narrating some of the incidents of misbehavior in airlines, especially in Indigo, majority of the Members opined that the attitude of airlines staff is very condescending, often unco-operative and on many occasions, downright rude,” it said.
Indigo, however, was unreachable for comments despite several attempts to contact them till the time the story went on wire.
The Committee said that merely taking strictest action against the employees does not absolve the airline of its guilt of the incident.
“The Committee observes that the problems affecting the airlines are not personal; it is institutional. An institution like Indigo has to develop a consumer friendly approach in dealing with their passengers. The Committee believes that being a leader in market share, Indigo needs to look inward and find out the reasons for the discourteous attitude and rude and indifferent behavior of their employees, whether it is their cabin crew or the ground staff. The Committee emphasizes that the arrogant behavior of employees should stop.”
“The crew should be trained to be more polite than saying ‘please’ or ‘thank you’. The passengers expect a civilised behavior from the cabin crew and the ground staff as the salaries to the cabin crew and ground staff are paid from the income earned from the passengers,” the report added.
The report also slammed various airlines for not efficiently manning checkin counters and creating artificial situations to deny boarding to confirmed ticket holders.
“The check-in process and collection of luggage are cumbersome and time consuming. What the passenger wants is a quick checkin, without long queues and a smooth process of security check.
“Despite the huge claims of airlines regarding the check-in process, the Committee is compelled to observe that the check-in counters are in a mess, especially those of the low cost airlines such as Indigo.”
The Committee said the airlines are overbooking flights and creating later, “artificial situations to deny boarding to the confirmed ticket holders. Many a times it has been noticed that adequate number of personnel are not posted to man the check-in counters.”
It recommended that arrangements be made to ensure that the passenger does not spend more than 10 minutes in a queue at the check-in counter to get a boarding pass.
Criticising the food quality offered by various airlines, the report said: “Many Members of the Committee pointed out the need to ensure better quality of food served in the airlines. They also said that the menu offered should be changed periodically. In some cases, the food offered is awful.”
It said the Committee was informed that there were great difficulties in getting water and food in low cost airlines especially in Indigo.
“In Indigo, the food has to be pre-booked and on board, if someone demands food, they refuse to provide the food even to those who are diabetic and suffering from other medical conditions. A passenger has to report to the airport counter 2 hours before the departure time and one has to spend a few more hours in the flight without food and water and it is a horrible thing to face.”
The Committee recommended that IndiGo and other low cost airlines should take adequate steps to ensure that food is available to the passengers on demand especially to those who are having some medical conditions.
—IANS
