India caps airfares as IndiGo crisis leaves hundreds stranded for fifth day

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By Francis Mascarenhas, Priyanshu Singh and Abhijith Ganapavaram

MUMBAI/BENGALURU, Dec 6 (Reuters) – India capped airfares on Saturday as hundreds of passengers gathered outside Bengaluru and Mumbai airports after IndiGo cancelled 385 flights on the fifth day of a crisis at the country’s biggest airline that has crippled air travel.

IndiGo has cancelled thousands of flights this week due to a shortage of pilots after it failed to plan adequately for new rules limiting pilots’ work hours.

The government responded on Friday, announcing special relief for the carrier and the operation of additional trains to help clear the backlog.

The Delhi airport posted on X on Saturday that flight operations were steadily resuming, but cancellations remained rife elsewhere.

‘WAITING FOR MY LUGGAGE’

With IndiGo’s spate of cancellations, fares rose on flights operated by other airlines on popular routes. The government said it was capping fares to maintain pricing discipline, without disclosing details of the caps.

The Civil Aviation Ministry said it would “continue to closely monitor fare levels through real-time data and active coordination with airlines”.

Fares were last capped during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

The flight cancellations are the biggest crisis ever for 20-year-old IndiGo, which has an over 60% market share in the world’s most-populous country and has prided itself on on-time performance while luring passengers with lower fares.

IndiGo acknowledges failing to plan properly for the November 1 deadline to implement the stricter rules on night flying and weekly rest for pilots.

On Friday, more than 1,000 IndiGo flights were cancelled. After the government announced the exemptions to the rules for IndiGo, the airline said it could return to normal operations between December 10 and 15.

On Saturday, IndiGo cancelled 124 flights in Bengaluru, 109 in Mumbai, 86 in New Delhi and 66 in Hyderabad, airport sources told Reuters.

The disruptions have upended weddings in India as many families and guests were stranded at airports.

Hundreds of passengers gathered outside Bengaluru and Mumbai airports on Saturday, some unaware of the cancellations, according to Reuters witnesses.

Satish Konde had to catch a connecting flight from Mumbai to the western city of Nagpur and had checked in before being told it was cancelled.

“I am waiting for my luggage to be returned,” he said.

PILOTS CALL EXEMPTION ‘SELECTIVE DISPENSATION’

The new pilot rest and duty rules capped the number of night landings to two from six and restricted the maximum number of hours a pilot can fly in the night to 10 hours.

For now, IndiGo has been exempted from both measures until February 10.

The new rules also said that if a pilot takes a personal leave that cannot be not counted in calculating his weekly rest period of 48 hours. That restriction too has been put on hold for all airlines, given the IndiGo crisis.

That has upset pilot labour groups, who told the government that safety must not be compromised to make up for IndiGo’s poor planning, the head of the Federation of Indian Pilots, C.S. Randhawa, told Reuters.

The Airline Pilots Association of India objected on Friday, calling the relief for IndiGo “selective dispensation”. The norms “exist solely to safeguard human life,” the association said in a letter to the government.

Other major Indian airlines, including Air India and Akasa, have not had to cancel flights due to the new rules.

(Reporting by Francis Mascarenhas, Priyanshu Singh and Abhijith Ganapavaram; Additional reporting by Dhwani Pandya, Arpan Chaturvedi, Abhijith G and Aditi Shah; Writing by Aditya Kalra; Editing by Sam Holmes and Tom Hogue)