Oversight on IndiGo under scanner, DGCA sacks 4 flight ops inspectors

Catch all the latest updates around IndiGo flight cancellations, refunds, investigation, and DGCA action here.

Questions have been raised from different quarters on the DGCA’s oversight on IndiGo following last week’s spate of flight cancellations and delays that severely impacted tens of thousands of passengers.

This could mark the beginning of government and regulatory action in the matter. A DGCA-constituted four-member inquiry committee is investigating the circumstances leading to the disruption, and is expected to submit its report within a few days to enable necessary regulatory enforcement action and ensure institutional strengthening.

Apart from the lapses on IndiGo’s part, questions have been raised on the quality of the DGCA’s oversight on airline operations and why even the regulator and the government could not see that a crisis was imminent.

The DGCA regularly engages experienced pilots on contract basis as FOIs and, during their service with the DGCA, they are not allowed to operate flights for airlines.

The FOIs are responsible for oversight, regulation and surveillance of airline operations in order to ensure safety and compliance with the prescribed rules and standards.

FOIs are critical to the functioning of the DGCA’s Flight Standards Directorate. The regulator had 17 FOIs, including the four who have been told to leave.

Meanwhile, the IndiGo board Friday approved the appointment of Chief Aviation Advisors LLC, led by veteran aviation expert Captain John Illson, as an external expert to conduct an independent review and assessment of the disruption and the factors that contributed to it.

This follows the announcement Wednesday by board chairman Vikram Singh Mehta that the board will involve an external technical expert to work with the management and help determine the root causes and ensure corrective action “so that this level of disruption never occurs again”.

According to Illson’s LinkedIn profile, he had earlier served as a senior advisor to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on development of strategies to enhance the FAA’s safety oversight systems.

The disruption faced by IndiGo, India’s largest airline with a market share of almost 65 per cent, was primarily due to the carrier’s inadequate preparation for the second phase of the new crew rest and duty norms that took effect November 1. IndiGo was short on crew against what the new norms required and, in combination with a few other factors, this led to widespread disruption in the airline’s operations, leading to scores of flight cancellations on a daily basis since the middle of last week.

In view of the disruption, which brought the aviation ecosystem to its knees, pilot associations and aviation experts questioned the DGCA’s oversight on the airline and the regulator’s decision to allow an increase in flights in the airline’s winter schedule that began October 26. The airline has now been ordered to curtail its domestic schedule by 10 per cent.

IndiGo said Friday that it expected to operate over 2,050 flights during the day, the highest since early December. Its schedule had over 2,300 daily flights, around 2,150 of which were domestic. The mandated 10 per cent curtailment in domestic flights would mean that the airline’s daily scheduled flights within the country would come down to less than 1,950.

IndiGo is likely to gradually scale up operations over the coming days to around 2,200 daily flights in all, of which around 1,900 will be domestic and roughly 300 international, according to sources in the know.

Also Friday, IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers and other top officials of the airline also appeared before the DGCA’s four-member inquiry panel.

Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu has promised stringent action based on the report against those found responsible for the IndiGo meltdown. He has blamed lapses on IndiGo’s part for the disruption and said the government action in this case will “set an example”, indicating that even the top management personnel of IndiGo may have their jobs on the line, apart from facing heavy financial penalties and other action.