Amid Air India Recruitment drive , Mass Sick Leave By Cabin Crews led to Indigo's On Time Performance drops by More than 50% !

Indian Leading carrier Indigo takes it seriously and it has been maintaining it's On Time Performance (OTP) setting examples for rivals , untill 2nd of July , when the OPT nosedived to 45.2%  !

If you observe it's campaigns , it boasts it's on time performance records from the very begining ! But this saturday story was different , rather unexpected , might be for Indigo itself.

An Indigo tweet from Dcember 2020 , campaigning about the OTP success.

An excess of 900 IndiGo flights were delayed on Saturday as it's cabin crew members took sick leave in bulk. It may not be a coincidence that the sick leaves were taken on the same day of Recruitment drive by Tata group backed Air India.

2022 summer travel has changed to extremes , we have been seeing the flight delay and cancellation trends in Spain due to the Industrial action by the Cabin crews of Ryanair and easyJet through their Unions , while European hubs are suffering from ground staff issues leading to travel chaos in the Airports.

Case for Indigo might be slightly different , Industrial action is not the case here , as the employees of a Private airline in India can't join in Union activities. Cabin crews or any other airline staffs rather look for better opportunities in Rival carriers in the South Asian country. 

Similar situation could have taken place here , won't be surprised if sick Indigo staffs were seen doing interviews in the Recruitment drive of  Air India , that formed the basis for drop of on time performance for IndiGo.

As more than half of the flights were delayed ; Indian Civil Aviation regulator DGCA is expected to probe the downfall , in addition to issuing a show cause notice to IndiGo , as a minimum.

Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) has revealed ,

"More than half of IndiGo flights were delayed on Saturday after a large number of inflight crew were reported sick. As a result, around 55 per cent of the total flights operated by the country’s largest airline were impacted on July 2,"

The Indian low-cost carrier operates around 1600 flights daily, out of which , more than 900 IndiGo flights were delayed on Saturday.

This development can also be connected with staff dissatisfaction owing to a better remuneration opportunity with other carriers compared to IndiGo.

Apart from the International expansion plans , incoming IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers's first challenge will be to retain the skilled and experienced staffs to lock the horns with upcoming competition from likes of  Air India , led by CEO Campbell Wilson and new players Jet Airways 2.0 and Akasa Air.

Display Picture : IndiGo