New Delhi. The country’s largest airline Indigo has vacated 717 slots at the domestic airport. The airline has taken this step after the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) issued instructions to reduce IndiGo’s winter flights by 10 percent.
Official sources said that IndiGo has left a total of 717 slots. The company has taken this step after the strictness of the aviation regulator. DGCA had cut the airline’s flights by 10 per cent by 10 per cent following mass cancellations and delays in December. IndiGo has vacated slots between January and March, with the highest number being in major metros.
Indigo airline has left its slots at a total of 16 airports in the country. In this, maximum 236 slots have been reduced at Mumbai Airport. After this comes Delhi, where 150 slots have been surrendered. 84 slots are left in Bengaluru, 68 in Hyderabad and 48 in Pune.
The airline has left 364 of these slots for six major metros of the country, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Of these, maximum slots have been vacated from Hyderabad and Bangalore. The abandoned slots spanned between January and March, with a peak of 361 slots in March.
The Civil Aviation Ministry has invited applications from other airlines to operate flights on these vacant slots. According to the ministry, IndiGo left these slots when its domestic flights were reduced by 10 percent in the beginning of December.
According to the ministry, the first meeting of the committee formed for redistribution of slots was held on January 13. After this the airlines have been asked to send their preferences and requests. Under the terms, airlines will have to use the vacant slots without closing their existing routes.
IndiGo usually operates more than 2,200 flights daily but following the DGCA directive, its number of domestic flights has now come down to around 1,930 daily. Earlier in the winter schedule, IndiGo was allowed 15,014 flights per week, which was an average of 2,144 flights per day.
In the beginning of December, IndiGo faced a huge operational crisis. Between December 3 and 5, the airline canceled 2,507 flights, while 1,852 flights were delayed, affecting more than three lakh passengers across the country. After this DGCA decided to cut flights.
Indigo fined for flight disruptions
DGCA on January 17 imposed a total fine of Rs 22.20 crore on IndiGo over the flight disruptions that occurred in December. Also, the airline was directed to deposit a bank guarantee of Rs 50 crore. According to DGCA, the main reasons for the massive disruption in flights were lack of sufficient flight crew members, weakness in regulatory preparation, flaws in software systems, weaknesses in management structure and lack of operational controls.
Aviation industry experts say that the slots left by IndiGo can be used by other airlines only temporarily, because after March these slots can go back to IndiGo. It is not practical for airlines to launch new routes in the short term. At the same time, many slots are late at night or early in the morning, so interest from other airlines may be limited.
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