After 2-hr meet, IndiGo CEO called again by DGCA

IndiGo’s worst operational crisis in years escalated further on Thursday, with Chief Executive Officer Pieter Elbers pulled into back-to-back meetings with aviation watchdog and now ordered to appear before a four-member DGCA committee on Friday. Also, the airline rolled out compensation ranging from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 for cancelled flights and Rs 10,000 travel vouchers for passengers stranded in the chaos.

The back-to-back summons came even as IndiGo briefed senior officials in a nearly two-hour, closed-door meeting on how the airline planned to stabilise operations after days of delays, baggage pile-ups and widespread cancellations. Officials were told that “IndiGo had deliberately throttled its network down to just over 1,950 flights a day, a trimmed schedule designed to ensure it could operate every published flight without last-minute collapse”.

But regulators were far from convinced. Elbers’ meeting with the DGCA on Thursday was described by officials as “exhaustive”, covering the chain of failures that paralysed the airline since December 3, from planning lapses around the implementation of new Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) norms to sudden crew shortage, mismanaged rosters and terminal-level congestion that left hundreds stranded for hours.

Within hours of that meeting, Elbers was summoned to appear on Friday before a DGCA committee constituted specifically to investigate IndiGo’s failures and determine whether deeper structural lapses were concealed behind the airline’s explanations.

In a rare move, two DGCA officers--a senior statistics officer and a deputy director--have been stationed inside IndiGo’s Gurugram headquarters to monitor every operational variable that contributed to the crisis. This includes cancellation patterns, on-time performance, crew deployment, unplanned leave, refund progress, allocation of compensation and routes affected by staffing shortages. They will file daily reports to the regulator.

Simultaneously, DGCA field teams have been dispatched to 11 domestic airports served by IndiGo. Each officer will conduct on-site inspections of aircraft rotations, passenger handling, baggage timelines, crew reporting, delays and cancellations, and submit a detailed report to the regulator’s Flight Safety Directorate within 24 hours of the visit.

Facing public fury, IndiGo announced a layered compensation package. Under government rules, passengers whose flights were cancelled within 24 hours of departure will receive Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 depending on block time.

Separately, the airline acknowledged that many passengers on December 3, 4 and 5 were “severely impacted and trapped for several hours amid airport congestion”. These flyers will be issued Rs 10,000 travel vouchers valid for any IndiGo journey for the next 12 months, over and above the statutory compensation.

“Our foremost priority remains the care of our customers,” the airline said, noting that refunds for most cancelled flights had already been issued and the remainder were being processed. IndiGo also said customers who booked via travel partners had had refund instructions transmitted to the respective platforms.

As per sources, IndiGo told the government that all destinations across its network had been fully reconnected since December 8 and that operations stabilised from December 9. The airline claimed no same-day cancellations in the last three days except for weather or technical issues, and said its on-time performance was “back to IndiGo standards”.

However, officials said the DGCA would verify these claims independently through its embedded officers and airport-level audits, given the scale of the collapse and the continuing passenger complaints.