‘No time to eat or use the washroom’: IndiGo staff struggle as flight delay crisis deepens

On December 5 alone, over 1000 flights were cancelled, while other days saw between 200 and 800 cancellations. During this situation, ground staff have been a constant presence at the airport, controlling crowds and providing solutions to angry passengers surrounding IndiGo counters at Terminal 1 and 2.

All hands on deck

Khan, who had been working the whole of last week, said, “My role is not even passenger-facing, but we all had to come into the terminal after a point so that we could handle the crowd that was ballooning around the counters.”

Uzair Khan, IndiGo ground staff

While understanding the passenger’s frustration, Khan said, “Though, for passengers, we are the face of the airline, in reality, we don’t control anything. We are being verbally and physically abused daily, but we are bearing it with a smile because that’s our job. Our airline has been operating in the country for almost 19 years, and it has gained a good reputation, so at the start of the crisis, we just expected passengers to be understanding and patient, which was not the case.”

Professional obligations

While the crisis has come as a blow to many passengers who have been dealing with emergencies, as this paper has highlighted, crew members have also been suffering. “My daughter had suffered a bad fall a few days prior to the start of the crisis, but I can’t be with her because I have to be here. When passengers accuse us of being apathetic, it hurts. Just as we don’t know the details of their personal lives, they did not know ours,” said Khan. Families of staff around the country are also afraid for their kin. “I know many youngsters who joined us a few months ago, whose families were very scared for them,” Khan added.

A passenger and IndiGo staffer have a heated exchange on Sunday

Another crew member, requesting anonymity, said, “My son is sick, but I had to finish my shift because if I had taken leave, several flights would have been impacted, angering even more passengers.” A cabin crew told mid-day, “We were also stuck in different cities for two days. The airline couldn’t provide us with accommodation for almost nine hours, and we couldn’t come out of airports because of the angry crowds.” Another cabin crew, who returned to Mumbai last night, after being stuck in Nagpur for two days, said, “The airline arranged for ferry flights for us. The airline and we are trying our best to help passengers out as much as we can.”

Acknowledgment helps

Baggage at Terminal 2 of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport that needs to reach owners. Pic/By Special Arrangement

As the majority of social media posts highlighted the anger of passengers, some netizens voiced support for the ground staff. “I saw a few videos going around the internet expressing empathy for us. Many of us were happy to see some finally acknowledging all the hard work we put in last week.” Meanwhile, IndiGo, by the evening of December 7, operated 1650 flights, 150 more than the previous day. The airline claimed that its on-time performance had risen by 30 per cent to 75 per cent.