Reuters
—
Crowds at India’s airports eased on Saturday, but hundreds of passengers still gathered outside Bengaluru and Mumbai airports as 385 IndiGo flights were canceled, a fifth day into the crisis that hit the country’s biggest airline.
Air travel across India has been disrupted this week after IndiGo canceled thousands of flights, with the government announcing special relief for airlines and opening some trains to clear the logjam.
This is the biggest crisis yet for the 20-year-old airline, which has long prided itself on on-time performance and lured passengers with low fares.
Indigo has admitted it failed to plan properly ahead of a November 1 deadline to introduce stricter rules for pilots on night flights and weekly rest, ultimately leading to issues over roster planning this week.
Over 1,000 IndiGo flights were canceled on Friday. Delhi Airport said in a post on X that flight operations are steadily resuming, but some IndiGo flights continue to be affected.
An airport source told Reuters that 124 IndiGo flights from Bengaluru were canceled on Saturday, leaving 109 flights to Mumbai, 86 to New Delhi and 66 to Hyderabad.
The Indian government has specially relaxed rules for the airline and IndiGo said it could return to normalcy between December 10 and 15.
Still, hundreds of passengers gathered outside Bangalore and Mumbai airports on Saturday, some with no knowledge of the cancellations, according to a Reuters photographer at the scene.
Satish Khonde had to take a connecting flight from Mumbai to Nagpur city and was checked in but later told that it had been cancelled.
“I’m waiting for my luggage to come back,” he told Reuters at the airport.
Other major Indian airlines, such as Air India and Acasa, have not experienced any flight cancellations due to the new rules.
