Severe disruption was caused to the Ahmedabad Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport on Saturday morning as IndiGo kept experiencing countrywide disruption in its operations in the face of several flight cancellations, crying passengers, and long queues.
These disruptions were made despite the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) putting its Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) orders under abeyance with immediate effect. The suspension of the regulatory process is preceded by several days of flight operations delays and cancellations in IndiGo that resulted in inconvenience trailed by the passengers in almost every sector.
Among the leading airports, Ahmedabad, seven arrivals and twelve departures were cancelled in Ahmedabad airport alone between 12 am and 6 am on Saturday. The suspension of services resulted in queues, congestion at desks, and increased impatience due to passengers unable to find other means of traveling.
Some of the affected included Mahrishi Jani who sobbed when he described how the disruption cost him and his team an opportunity that they had put months in to get.
“I was booked up to visit Guwahati, at 6.15 am; it was a Kolkata-Guwahati connecting flight. Instead, we were chosen in Smart India Hackathon 2025; approximately 74,000 ideas were provided there and around 1400 ideas were shortlisted. Our campus was the North-Eastern hill university and we were to perform there”, he informed ANI.
Jani further explained that having spent months of planning, his six-member team and two mentors that accompaniment had nothing left to do but waste their time. “We had booked IndiGo flights. But there is a flight that is not made and we cannot get there. The transport is not possible in any other way. Assuming we use a train it will take us 3 days to get there. We now have wasted our 6-7 months of hard labor. We are returning home. Opportunities are uncommon…We happened to be chosen in the first instance, but through the cancellation of the flights, we cannot proceed. Our team was composed of 6 individuals; we had 2 mentors.
Ikhlaq Hussain, another passenger, reported that he was stuck even after flying overseas. I am in Ahmedabad, Jeddah, I will be heading to Lucknow…I have been stuck here in the last 2 days but the flight is persistently getting postponed, Hussain replied.
Friday was the day when many passengers were inconvenienced nationwide as the IndiGo flights were delayed and canceled. In the face of the prevailing problem, a passenger, who was supposed to be landing at Bengaluru in the Jodhpur Airport, expressed the airline has not been responding at all since morning.
Not a single person of IndiGo is giving out the answer. Here we have stood since morning… I have been standing standing since the morning. I only have until evening to go to Bengaluru… I am worried,” he said.
Further, another, who is a passenger at the biju patnaik international Airport in Odisha, complained that despite her spending three hours at the airport, she was not informed on anything regarding her flight.
“My flight is between Bhubaneswar and Bengaluru and the date was set to December 5… I was on a flight down to Vietnam. This crisis started on December 3. I arrived here last night to enquire about my flight…I spent three hours here inquiring of them regarding my flight matters but they replied that they have no idea… Yesterday they had flights to Bengaluru…
I asked them to reserve me a seat in one of the flights they had to Bengaluru…so that I could board my international flight to Vietnam at this location… they could not even reserve me a seat… We could not take the road since it would take us 25-26 hours to cover 1310km Bangladeshwar to Bengaluru… There is no one listening to anything. The number of staff members is only one, and they do not possess answers and solutions… There is no clarity…” she stated.
In the meantime, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has instructed airlines, in particular, IndiGo, to take actions as soon as possible to fix the critical interrupting to the flight schedules and stabilise the services without wasting more time, an official statement indicated.
Two orders are issued to solve issues experienced by people to restore the service stability particularly on IndiGo.
The order read, It is anticipated: All flights schedules would stabilise and then start getting normal around the middle of the night today; Full services and stability would come back within the next two days; Passengers can track their flight delays, handy with information systems installed by IndiGo and others; In the event of flight cancellation IndiGo would make sure full refund is given to customers automatically.
In case the passengers are stranded, they will be accommodated in hotels in which the airlines have already booked living quarters. Efforts have been made to make sure that the elderly citizens are in no way discomposited. They will also be given access to lounge, Passengers of delayed flights will be served refreshments and other needs; 24×7 controlling room in the Ministry of Civil Aviation keeps round the clock checking of the situation in terms of time basis, further read the order.
Central Government is in full alert concerning the woes of air passengers as the Ministry of Civil Aviation said it is always consulting with all the stakeholders. The statement continued by stating that every possible action, such as rule exemptions which the Directorate General of Civil Aviation announced on Friday, would be implemented in order to restore schedules, and make sure stability so that the sufferings of the population should be curtailed.
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