IndiGo flights to be cancelled on Saturday? CEO Pieter Elbers shares an update as airline faces massive crisis

India’s dominant carrier IndiGo is facing a major crisis and the airline canceled more than 1,000 flights on Friday, more than half of its scheduled departures. The chaos began on Tuesday when IndiGo started canceling flights at an unusual rate due to crew shortages. It then canceled all departures from New Delhi Airport, India’s busiest airport, at noon on Friday.

According to the Indian Express, IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers expects less than 1,000 flights to be canceled on Saturday. After IndiGo faced major flight disruptions on Friday, CEO Pieter Elbers issued an apology and promised full restoration of services between December 10-15.

Will IndiGo flights be canceled on Saturday?

A large number of IndiGo flights have been canceled at various airports over the last few days, leaving passengers in a difficult situation. The IndiGo crisis was largely triggered by an unexpected pilot shortage under new tenure rules, which led to the government temporarily suspending IndiGo’s new pilot tenure rules to ease widespread flight cancellations. IndiGo attributed the outage to “unforeseen operational challenges”.
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IndiGo CEO expects less than 1,000 flight cancellations on Saturday. IndiGo has an undisputed position as India’s largest airline. It operates about 2,300 flights a day and had about 118 million passengers arriving last year. The company’s CEO, Pieter Elbers, said in a video statement late Friday that the easing of rules “has brought great benefits” but “there is still a lot of work in progress.”

Elbers said Friday was the “most severely affected day” with “more than a thousand” cancellations. He added that the company expects cancellations to fall below 1,000 on Saturday before a return to normal between December 10 and 15.
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Delhi Airport in IndiGo crisis

Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport said IndiGo flight operations have returned to normal. “We are happy to update that Indigo flight operations are now running steadily and back to normal after brief disruption. Please check the status of your booking and flight before leaving home.”Delhi airport has also advised passengers to check the real-time status of flights of all other airlines on or through their respective websites. http://www.newdelhiairport.in.