New Delhi: As flight operations of Indigo airlines continue to remain chaotic, with an unforeseen number of last-minute cancellations and delays, passengers’ protests and unrest have become a common sight at airports.

Reports said on Sunday, December 7, that more than 400 flights of the beleagured airline were cancelled by late afternoon.

Further, although the Union Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) has capped flight fares through an official directive issued on the afternoon of Saturday, December 6, in light of steep surges in ticket prices in the domestic sector, it has barely brought respite to stranded passengers.

Look at the plight of the Panda family with whom the Indian Express spoke. Distressed and worn out at gate number 5 of Terminal 1 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi, the Panda family scrambled for alternatives after their Indigo flight – booked two months earlier – was cancelled at the last minute on Saturday.

“They cancelled my flight… but on the website, it still shows that the flight is delayed. My mother (60) has a spinal injury. That is why I chose flight instead of trains,” Shubham Panda (26) told the Indian Express. Shubham had travelled along with his parents and brother to Vrindavan and reached Delhi in the morning to catch a flight back to Bhubaneswar. Only after reaching the airport, the Panda family got to know that 106 flights had been cancelled, a tad better than the situation on Friday, when over 500 flights were cancelled but still far from normal.

The return tickets for the Panda family came for Rs 27,000 but after its cancellation, the new tickets will now cost Rs 2 lakh. “This is absurd. I’m not travelling to another country. We, Indians, are facing a crisis,” he said.

Many were seen sleeping in luggage trolleys or on the ground as their flights were cancelled and alternatives were unavailable.

“We were at [a] wedding… How will we know that flights were being cancelled? Pata rehta toh aadmi doosra jugaad karta (If we had known earlier, we would have figured out another way) but we got no message,” Bhagwan Sharma, 58, told the Indian Express.

Meanwhile, the civil aviation ministry directed all airlines to strictly adhere to fare caps. In its directive, MoCA said, “These caps will remain in force until the situation fully stabilises. The objective of this directive is to maintain pricing discipline in the market, prevent any exploitation of passengers in distress, and ensure that citizens who urgently need to travel – including senior citizens, students, and patients – are not subjected to financial hardship during this period.”

The airfare caps are as follows: Rs 7,500 for a stage length of up to 500 km (Delhi-Jaipur/Chandigarh), Rs 12,000 for 500-1,000 km (Delhi-Bhopal/Jammu), Rs 15,000 for 1,000-1,500 km (Delhi-Mumbai/Kolkata) and Rs 18,000 for over 1,500 km (say, Delhi-Chennai/Bengaluru) exclusive of taxes and cesses.

Yet, several passengers said that even Delhi-Bengaluru and Delhi-Mumbai flights, very busy routes, were selling in the range of Rs 65,000 to Rs 75,000 despite the caps.

According to reports, the fare situation did not ease even well into the day on December 7.

“Nobody is following the guidelines, they all are extorting money. More than me, people who have connecting flights are suffering,” one passenger said, while complaining about Indigo's 'defunct' customer care services.

There are so many people facing a mental breakdown: college student Aryan Dev who could not travel on time for his scheduled semester examination, another who had to go to Patna to give a job interview, another who had come to Delhi for spinal treatment but is now unable to return to his hometown, a newly-wed couple who may not be able to attend their own wedding reception in Nagpur. Such stories are abundant, making the Indigo chaos not merely a disruption but also a humanitarian crisis.

With over 800 cancellations on Saturday, airline counters were sites of chaos and aggression. Indigo said on the intervening night of December 6 and 7 that it was on way to operating over 1,500 flights that time, almost double the 700 that could fly on Friday.

However, with Indigo earlier operating 2,300 flights a day, the situation may not improve for many passengers. The company has reportedly said that it expects the situation to stabilise by December 10 – the middle of next week.

Meanwhile, MoCA has asked Air India and Air India Express to “add capacity to help travellers and their baggage reach their destinations as quickly as possible”.

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