TMC's Saket Gokhale asks Centre to conduct inquiry against IndiGo amid travel delay chaos

Trinamool Congress' Saket Gokhale on Monday asked Centre to conduct 'urgent' inquiry against IndiGo airline as its flight delays led to utter chaos in North India. 

"Attention IndiGo flyers. Over the last 2 days specifically, I've been apprised of numerous passenger complaints against IndiGo over heavily delayed flights, lack of timely communication from the airline, and unprofessional behavior. What happened with IndiGo on 13th & 14th cannot be blamed solely on the fog in North India. There are horror tales of travellers from other parts of India who faced the same problems," said Gokhale on X platform (formerly Twitter).

Gokhale also said that he wrote to the Ministry of Civil Avation seeking an inquiry against the airline for causes of breakdown in its operations. He said that he also faced trouble while taking a Delhi-Kolkata round trip. 

"An airline has all the right to grow & expand but not at the cost of passenger convenience especially when its airfares are no cheaper than full-service airlines. I've written to Secretary, Civil Aviation, asking for an URGENT enquiry to be conducted against IndiGo for the events of 13th & 14th Jan as well as their recent trend of being unable to manage operations on time and failure to communicate with passengers. IndiGo must be held accountable and this needs to be fixed," he added. 

Atotal of five flights were diverted at the Delhi airport early morning on Monday due to bad weather, according to an official. Four flights were diverted to Jaipur and one flight to Ahmedabad between 1 am and 5 am, the official said. On Sunday, 10 flights were diverted and some were cancelled as the airport operations were significantly impacted due to low visibility conditions and dense fog.

"Due to the low visibility and dense fog conditions across North India, IndiGo flight operations were impacted on Jan 14, 2024. This had a cascading effect on our operations throughout the day. Our staff kept passengers apprised of all delays and cancellations across airports and made every possible effort to facilitate the passengers. We sincerely regret the inconvenience caused to our passengers," said IndiGo in a statement.