NEW DELHI: Under government scrutiny for unprecedented flight disruptions, IndiGo chairman Vikram Singh Mehta on Wednesday denied the chaos was deliberate. Apologising multiple times in his about 8-minute video message, he said “external technical experts (will) work with the management; help determine the root causes, and ensure corrective action so that this level of disruption never occurs again”.Also Read | IndiGo crisis: DGCA deploys oversight team at airline’s Gurgaon HQ; flight ops under lensDGCA is probing whether the airline caused the disruptions to avoid abiding by the new pilot rest rules. Mehta denied it. “Over the past week there has been a lot of criticism. Some fair. Some not. The fair criticism is that the airline let down you down. We owe answers to customers, govt, shareholders, employees. We will examine every aspect of what went wrong. We will learn from it,” he said.
“However, there are some allegations that are untrue. That IndiGo engineered the crisis. That we tried to influence govt rules. That we compromised safety. That the board wasn’t involved. These claims are incorrect. IndiGo has followed pilot fatigue rules as they came into effect. We operated under new rules throughout, both in July and in Nov. We did not attempt to bypass them. Nor did we anything that impacted our unblemished track record of safety. The disruptions of last week did not happen because of any deliberate actions,” said the former chairman of Shell Group of companies in India.Also Read | In a first, DGCA eight-member team to oversee IndiGo flight ops“On Dec 3, an unexpected chain of events led to large-scale flight cancellations. This continued into Dec 4 and 5. Thousands of our passengers were left stranded. We did not meet your expectations during those days. This happened because of a combination of of internal & external events including minor technical glitches; schedule changes linked to start of winter; adverse weather; increased congestion in aviation system and implementation of and operation under updated crew rostering rules. This is not an excuse, this is simply the truth. This combination of events pushed our systems beyond their limits,” Mehta said. He said the board was constantly involved in tackling the issue and that things were back on track much before expected. IndiGo operated 1,900 flights to 138 destinations with normal punctuality, he said. Although he admitted: “Last week’s events are a blemish on this company’s pristine record. Our compay has erred. It has to win back your trust. It will not be easy. It will depend on actions and not words. It will be a journey.”
