IndiGo, once the most punctual airline in India now struggles in time-keeping

IndiGo, India’s largest airline was known as the most punctual airline in the country beating all its rivals. But for the past six months, they have been struggling to maintain the punctuality and their rank has gone down.

Before April, Indigo had achieved 95.4% and 93.9% for reaching destinations on time for domestic flights in February and March respectively. But now it has become 84 per cent. This is a challenge to IndiGo, which has always been unbeatable by rivals in terms of punctuality. But however, the Tata Group airlines Air Asia India and Vistara have been soaring ahead in time-keeping.

As per DCGA’s figures from September, Vistara was the most punctual airline with on-time performance of 91%, followed by Air Asia India (89.8%) and Air India (87.1%). IndiGo is ranked fourth with 84.1%.

IndiGo airlines has 57.7% market share. More flights were delayed at Mumbai airport. One reason for IndiGo's delay could be its sheer size. This company has a monopoly on domestic service from airports like Delhi and Mumbai. So, with 150-200 services per day from these busy airports alone, even a slight delay in departure is likely to affect subsequent services.

Apart from this, the availability of spare parts also affects the punctuality. If an aircraft is found to require a change in spare part during the pre-flight inspection and if that’s not available, then that also leads to delays as another aircraft has to be arranged to fix such a situation.