Representative image of flights being displayed as cancelled on airport screens
Credit: iStock Photo
New Delhi: A little over 25,500 flights were cancelled between January 2022 and September this year impacting 10.67 lakh flyers in the country with weather conditions playing the villain in 41.56 per cent instances, official statistics placed in Parliament has shown.
Due to the volume of its business, IndiGo accounted for 60.53 per cent, or 15,464 of 25,547 flight cancellations, among the operators during the 33 months since January 2022, followed by Alliance Air, 2,707, Air India, 1,934, and SpiceJet, 1,731.
The statistics were part of a written reply by Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol presented in Rajya Sabha to questions posed by CPI MP PP Suneer, who had sought details of cancellations, its reasons and the compensation provided to affected passengers among other things.
Of the 25,547 cancellations, the highest was in the first nine months of this year at 11,707 followed by 7,427 last year and 6,413 in 2022. This year till September, IndiGo saw 7,135 flights getting cancelled.
Among the reasons, weather played spoilsport in 10,619 cases. The rest were due to technical, commercial, operational and other reasons.
When it comes to money spent on compensation or facilitating amenities, IndiGo, which had the highest cancellations, spent the least.
According to the figures in the written reply, it spent just Rs 18,000 in 2022 while it did not shell out a single rupee in 2023 or this year for a total of 5.47 lakh passengers impacted by cancellation since 2022.
The data showed that Air India spent Rs 9.61 crore for 1.33 lakh flyers while SpiceJet spent Rs 6.19 crore for 1.68 lakh passengers. A total of Rs 23.81 crore was spent on compensation or facilitation for passengers impacted by cancellation of flights in the past three years.
The number of people whose travel schedule was upset due to cancellations was the highest this year compared to the two previous years -- 2.20 lakh passengers in 2022, which rose to 3.12 lakh in the next year and further jumped to 5.34 lakh in the first nine months of this year.
Mohol said the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has issued Civil
Aviation Requirements (CAR) titled 'Facilities to be provided to passengers by airlines due to denied boarding, cancellation of flights and delays in flights' to ensure facilitation/compensation for passengers affected due to delay or cancellation of a flight.
In order to check the compliance of provisions laid down in the CAR by the airline, including flight cancellation, he said, the DGCA conducts surveillance inspections/spot checks at various airports in the country.