Amid continuous disruption to its services, affecting hundreds of passengers across the nation for the past few days, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of IndiGo Airlines on Thursday acknowledged that the company "could not live up to the promise of providing a good experience to customers."
In a letter to IndiGo employees, Pieter Elbers apologised for the cancellations and delays of hundreds of flights operated by the airline in the past few days.
"These past few days have been difficult for many of our IndiGo customers and colleagues. We serve close to 380,000 customers a day and want each of them to have a good experience. We could not live up to that promise these past days, and we have publicly apologised for that," Elbers wrote.
The CEO blamed operational challenges, including the implementation of the revised Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) for the disruptions to the airline's services.
"An accumulation of several operational challenges - including minor technology glitches, schedule changes, adverse weather conditions, heightened congestion in the aviation ecosystem, and the implementation of the newly released FDTL norms - compounded negatively to create a cascading impact on our operations," he said.
Elbers added that the airline has been reaching out to its customers and helping them to ease the discomfort caused by the flight disruptions.
"We are feeling our customers' concern and anxieties just as deeply. We are proactively reaching out to affected customers and helping them in every way possible to ease their discomfort," he said.
More than 550 flights --both domestic and international-- were cancelled and services were delayed across various airports in the country, including Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore on Thursday as disruptions to IndiGo's operations continued for a second consecutive day.
The disruptions came a day after more than 200 flights were cancelled and many others delayed amid a nationwide crew shortage and software glitches.