Fly Delhi-Istanbul flights with upto 22% seats vacant on strong headwind days, DGCA tells IndiGo

NEW DELHI: Fly your planes with 15% to 22% seats unoccupied while operating on the Delhi-Istanbul route on strong headwind days, India’s aviation regulator directed IndiGo on Friday. The budget airline’s 186-seater Airbus A320 Neos should have upto 157 passengers on board and the 222-seater A321s should have no more than 173 passengers on board on such days.
Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) chief Arun Kumar’s directive came after passengers on many of IndiGo’s Delhi-Istanbul flights in recent days were discovering that while they reached their destination, their baggage hadn’t taken off from Delhi. The reason: Due to strong headwinds IndiGo’s Delhi-Istanbul flying time has been over seven hours in past few weeks which is pretty close to the maximum operating range of the single aisle Airbus A320/321s used by it. So to carry more fuel, baggage was being left behind on IndiGo’s Delhi-Istanbul flights of last Sunday and a few more days of all or most of the passengers.