IndiGo flight cancellations: Passengers continue to suffer as airline cancels 112 flights from Hyderabad Airport

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Chaos in Indian aviation continued on Monday as IndiGo Airlines struggled to operate smoothly, with passengers at Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) facing disruption due to 112 flight cancellations, news agency IANS reported.

This was the seventh consecutive day on which Indigo's services remained disrupted. The cancellations on Monday include 58 arrivals and 54 departures.

With no signs of normalcy returning to IndiGo's operations at Hyderabad's Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, thousands of passengers continue to suffer.

For the fifth consecutive day, the number of cancellations was over 100, IANS reported. More than 600 flights have been cancelled at RGIA since December 2.

Furthermore, as many as 126 flights were cancelled on Sunday (December 7), while 144 flights were cancelled the day before that.

While hundreds of passengers were stranded due to cancellations, some grew frustrated and were seen making enquiries aggressively, expressing their distress over the airline's disruptions, IANS reported.

To keep the situation under control, the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) stepped up security at the airport as a precautionary measure.

Also, the cancellations on key domestic routes severely disrupted the travel plans of the passengers for the seventh consecutive day.

Cancellation of departures and arrivals on key domestic routes such as Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Visakhapatnam, Goa, Madurai, and Bhubaneswar severely inconvenienced passengers.

On Sunday, IndiGo had announced that they had resumed operations at 137 of their 138 destinations. The airline also said that they are back on track to operate 1,650 flights for the day, compared to 1,500 flights on December 6.

They further stated, "Indigo's on-time performance had risen from 30 per cent on December 6 to 75 per cent on December 7."

Indigo also announced a full waiver on cancellations and rescheduling requests for bookings till December 15.

The airline has attributed the crisis to the new Flight Duty Time Limit (FDTL) norms. These rules, implemented in two phases from July to November, increase weekly rest of pilots to 48 hours, extend night-duty definitions, and cap night landings at two. The norms were rolled out following the Delhi High Court orders.

On a request by IndiGo, aviation regulator DGCA granted temporary relaxations until February 10.

(With inputs from IANS)