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India’s aviation ministry on Saturday capped airfares as the country’s biggest carrier IndiGo left customers struggling to make other arrangements due to flight cancellations.
Large numbers of passengers were seen gathering at many big stations in India. airports After the fifth day, IndiGo was forced to cancel hundreds of flights.
indigo Is Thousands of flights canceled this week Travel chaos is spreading across the country. The budget airline has attributed the cancellations to a number of factors, but the primary issue appears to be a shortage of pilots after new rules came into effect limiting their working hours.
The government has since announced special relief for carriers from the new rules, as well as running additional trains to help provide passengers with alternative travel arrangements.
Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport posted on Saturday that flight operations are gradually resuming, but the airline still canceled 385 flights across the country, affecting passengers mostly at Mumbai and Bengaluru airports.
IndiGo’s wave of cancellations triggered a sharp increase in airfares on key routes, with economy class tickets between New Delhi and Mumbai costing an average of around Rs 20,000 (£166) on Saturday – fares are usually around Rs 6,000.
Without sharing details, the aviation ministry said it was capping the fares to maintain pricing discipline in the market. “The ministry will continue to closely monitor fare levels through real-time data and active coordination with airlines,” it said.
The ministry has directed IndiGo to pay all pending passenger refunds by 8 pm on Sunday night and reschedule flight tickets without any extra charges. It said that the airline will have to deliver all the luggage separated from the passengers to the chosen address within the next 48 hours.
Indian domestic airlines are not required to pay additional compensation to customers in case of flight delays or cancellations.
Analysts say the flight cancellations represent the biggest crisis in the 20-year history of IndiGo, which has rocketed to first place in India’s fast-growing aviation sector by market share due to a combination of low-cost fares and a good reputation for on-time reliability.
IndiGo has admitted that it failed to plan properly ahead of the November 1 deadline to implement strict rules on night flying and weekly rest for pilots, which ultimately led to scheduling problems this week.
Since the implementation of the new rules, no major airlines in the country including Air India have faced such problems.
The airline said it expected to return to normal operations between December 10-15.
Airport sources said IndiGo canceled 124 flights in Bengaluru, 109 in Mumbai, 86 in New Delhi and 66 in Hyderabad on Saturday. Satish Conde was scheduled to catch a connecting flight from Mumbai to the western city of Nagpur and had checked in, but was later told that it had been cancelled. “I’m waiting for my luggage to be returned,” he told Reuters.