It’s official now. Jan 2024, the foggiest winter month in years, was a nightmare for domestic flyers and saw one of the highest number of travellers being affected by flight delays and cancellations. DGCA data shows 1.3 crore people flew within the country last month, 4.7 per cent more than 1.25 crore in Jan 2023. However, the number of passengers who faced delays was 4.8 lakh, double of 2.4 lakh in Jan 2023. The number of domestic flyers who faced delays was 2.9 lakh and 2.4 lakh in the pre-Covid Dec 2019 and Jan 2020, respectively.
On time performance (OTP) of airlines plummeted last month, with the biggest airline, IndiGo, which flies six out of every 10 domestic passengers, seeing only 60 per cent of its flights departing on time, DGCA data shows. Among big airlines, Vistara’s OTP was 67.8 per cent and Air India’s at 47.6 per cent. SpiceJet remained at the bottom of the punctuality list, with its OTP at just 37.9 per cent. India’s youngest airline Akasa saw its 20-odd aircraft flying with an OTP of 71.8 per cent, the highest among scheduled carriers, last month. The aviation regulator measures OTP at Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
On January 16, in a blog on its website, digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) said it had written “to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, NITI Aayog, Airports Authority of India, Digi Yatra Foundation and the Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kochi, and Hyderabad regional airports, bringing their attention to the worrisome implementation of the Digi Yatra service across airports in India”.
A number of simultaneous events made Jan 2024 a nightmare for air travellers. These included the worst spell of fog that north India saw in years, airports in some other regions also affected by poor visibility and closure of the main CAT III runway at Delhi, leaving only one CAT III runway during the worst fog period. An aircraft delayed at any one of the north Indian airports-especially the biggest base Delhi-would have a cascading effect on all the other flights.Passenger woes mounted to such an extent that the aviation ministry had to step in and Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) imposed steep fines on SpiceJet, Air India and IndiGo, and Mumbai airport for violations such as not deploying aircraft equipped to land in Delhi’s dense fog; not having CAT III-trained crew on some flights and not taking required care of passengers of diverted flights. The highly-constrained Mumbai airport and CAT III-constrained Delhi’s IGIA were the two places where the airlines reported their lowest OTP.
