New Delhi: Passengers at Delhi airport created a ruckus on Saturday after their IndiGo flight to Purnea was delayed, triggering anger among travellers who said the service had already faced disruptions a day earlier.
According to passengers, IndiGo flight 6E 9076, scheduled to operate from Delhi to Purnea, was delayed on Saturday after having already been cancelled on Friday, forcing them to reschedule their tickets.
The repeated disruption led to furious scenes at the boarding counter, with passengers protesting the delay in departure.
Several passengers said the flight had been cancelled on Friday as well, following which they had rearranged their travel plans.
On Saturday, they claimed, the airline cited bad weather as the reason for the delay. Some passengers further alleged that airline staff later informed them that there was no pilot available to operate the flight.
Meanwhile, IndiGo had earlier in the day issued advisories warning passengers about possible delays and cancellations of several flights due to “reduced visibility and fog” at multiple airports.
The incident comes just days after IndiGo, on December 29, 2024, cancelled as many as 118 flights across its network due to a mix of bad weather and operational reasons.
Of these, six services were cancelled due to operational constraints, while the remaining flights were called off owing to adverse weather conditions at different airports.
IndiGo has been grappling with large-scale disruptions over the past month.
In early December last year, the airline cancelled thousands of flights, including around 1,600 on a single day, after court-mandated stricter flight duty and rest period norms for pilots came into force. The cancellations left lakhs of passengers stranded at airports across the country.
Since the onset of the fog season on December 10, the airline has continued to cancel a significant number of flights.
On December 25, IndiGo cancelled 67 flights to various destinations, citing weather-related issues. On Saturday alone, another 57 flights from several airports were cancelled due to bad weather conditions.
The aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), has declared the period from December 10 to February 10 as the official fog window for the winter season, during which flight operations are often affected by low visibility.
(IANS)
