Airline's focus now on resilience, root cause analysis, rebuilding: IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers

Mumbai: IndiGo Chief Executive Officer Pieter Elbers on Thursday said the airline's focus now is on three things -- resilience, root-cause analysis, and rebuilding, after the domestic carrier inconvenienced and caused hardship to lakhs of passengers across airports by cancelling thousands of flights earlier this month.

In a video message to employees on Thursday, Elbers said the focus of IndiGo is now on rebuilding the airline post-stabilisation of operations, and that the airline's Board has appointed an external aviation expert to conduct a comprehensive root-cause analysis.

"On December 9, I shared the stabilization of IndiGo's operation. After that, we restored our network to 2,200 flights today (Thursday). Now we focus on three things: resilience, root cause analysis and rebuilding (the airline)," Elbers said.

Attributing the disruptions seemingly to a "compounding effect of several factors," he said, "an external aviation expert has been appointed by the Board to conduct a comprehensive root cause analysis." Elbers said he, along with the leadership, will travel across the network to meet the employees and understand the challenges they faced during the disruptions.

These were the employees on the ground, who faced severe backlash and public ire during the over a week-long massive disruptions at the Rahul Bhatia-controlled private carrier, as the airline failed to provide even basic amenities or proper information while abruptly cancelling hundreds of flights every day.

IndiGo cancelled thousands of flights between December 1 and December 9 due to a lack of proper planning and crew shortages in implementing the new regulations on pilots' duty periods and rest, which were put in place from November 1.

A DGCA panel is already probing the operational disruptions at IndiGo.

Besides, the government has already slashed IndiGo’s current winter schedule by 10 per cent following large-scale flight cancellations earlier this month.