Air travellers should not be tortured

Flight services can be disrupted for various reasons. No one can avoid flight disruptions due to weather conditions. However, the cancellation and delay of hundreds of flights due to the shortage of pilots and other staff is tantamount to torturing air travellers. Hundreds of flights have been cancelled in the country in recent days due to reasons such as a glitch in the check-in system of airlines and a shortage of pilots at IndiGo. 200 flights of IndiGo alone were cancelled on Wednesday. The company has announced that it will take two more days for the services to be fully operational.

IndiGo has attributed the service disruption to technical issues, schedule changes, bad weather and new crew duty time rules. The companies operating the service are responsible for all the issues except bad weather. News media reports that the duty time rule is the main reason for the service disruption. New flight duty time limitation rules, which provide more rest for pilots to combat fatigue, were implemented in phases, with key provisions becoming effective on November 1. The resulting mass cancellations and delays occurred because airlines did not have enough pilots to cover the existing schedules under the stricter rest requirements. The fact that even pilots who were absent due to illness had to be recalled should also be seen as a serious lapse.

It was a glitch in the check-in system that caused the cancellation of services of companies like Air India, SpiceJet, Aakash Air, and Air India Express on Tuesday night and caused delays of hours. Due to this system failure, check-in and baggage procedures were completed manually at many airports. Meanwhile, passengers were informed at Varanasi airport that the reason for the cancellation of services was a malfunction in Microsoft Windows. However, Microsoft officials later clarified that this was untrue and that there was no malfunction in Microsoft Windows. This raises doubts that the companies are not informing even the true reasons to the passengers.

IndiGo has informed the DGCA that it had to cut 1232 services in November alone. 755 services had to be cancelled due to duty time constraints. Only 67.7 percent of the services were on time in November. It was 84.1 percent in October. This shows that services were frequently disrupted even before the duty time rule came into effect. The DGCA and the Ministry of Civil Aviation should immediately intervene and investigate this issue. Only the wealthy were affected by flight disruptions in the past. This is not the case today. Even ordinary people rely heavily on air services to travel for work, education, and other purposes. Service disruptions sometimes negatively affect even the future of some people. Therefore, those concerned should take action to resolve this uncertainty in air travel as soon as possible.