Even as India’s largest airline continues to be marred with mass flight cancellations due to restructuring of its roster, the company believes that it has enough pilots and that its operations are expected to stabilise by April 1.
“We have enough pilots … but certain circumstances came together — we wanted to have more buffer but expatriates came in later, inductions came in later, we had a very tough winter that exhausted our pilots in terms of hours and the hailstorm, which was completely unpredictable. So when we had to re-roster, it became very difficult and we had to cancel flights,” IndiGo’s chief operating officer Wolfgang Prock-Schauer told The Indian Express.
Prock-Schauer said that the airline had 1,260 captains on its roster, translating to about 6.65 captains per aircraft according to which the roster was planned but the culmination of various factors resulted in the operations going haywire. IndiGo said it would cancel 30 flights every day till the end of February but due to weather conditions and airspace closure at Bengaluru airport, actual cancellations are more than planned.
