IndiGo CEO apologises, says refunds ramped up, but flyers should brace for 5-10 more days of disruptions, expect normalcy mid-December

IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers issued a public apology on Friday evening after the airline faced one of the largest operational meltdowns in its history, cancelling more than a thousand flights in a single day. 

Peter Elbers accepted the grim situation: "We have experienced severe operational disruptions for the past few days. Since then, the crisis continued to aggravate, with today, December 5th, being the most severely impacted day."

Calling it the “most severely impacted day” ever for the carrier, Peter Elbers confirmed that the airline cancelled “more than half” of its daily flights as it attempted a full-scale reboot of operations.

While disruptions are expected to continue into Saturday, IndiGo anticipates “fewer than 1,000” cancellations. 

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Indigo CEO anticipates further delays

The CEO acknowledged the massive inconvenience that has been caused to passengers across major airports. 

“We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience caused. Today has been the most challenging day for us in terms of cancellations and disruptions,” he said, as per a report by Republic World. 

The root cause of this may-hem 

He added that the root cause was the airline’s decision to reboot its entire operational system. 

In his video, he also requested passengers not to travel to the airport if their flights had already been cancelled.

Peter Elbers explained that IndiGo has ramped up customer communication. “Firstly, customer communication and addressing your needs, for this, messages have been sent on social media. And just now, a more detailed communication with information, refunds, cancellations and other customer support measures was sent,” he said.

“Secondly, due to yesterday's situation, we had customers stranded mostly at the nation's largest airports. Our focus was for all of them to be able to travel today itself, which will be achieved. For this, we also ask customers whose flights are cancelled not to come to the airports as notifications are sent,” he stated.

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Roadmap ahead

He also explained the roadmap for operational reset. 

He explained, “Thirdly, cancellations were made for today to align our crew and planes to be where they need to start tomorrow morning afresh. Earlier measures of the last few days, regrettable, have proven not to be enough, but we have decided today to reboot all our systems and schedules.”

Netizens react

But netizens were far from satisfied.

One user wrote,“Hostile! This is blackmailing DGCA to relax rules which were notified in January 2024. Indigo had enough time for resourcing which were short down earlier for cost cutting. Refund cannot compensate the great inconvenience caused to passengers.”

Another questioned the airline’s continued ticket sales, asking,“Will you compensate for the inconvenience caused Sir? Why are you still selling tickets if the situation is going to be grim?”

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