New Delhi [India]: National Carrier IndiGo on Sunday rebuffed the claim of cancellation of its daily flight, as being reported, saying that the ‘misleading’ information is being spread by the competitors to malign the image of the airlines.
“We believe that this misleading information about the alleged spurt in cancellations has been spread by one of our competitors within a few hours of the release by the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) of the latest On Time Performance data for the month of July,” the budget carrier said in its press release.
The statement further read that the DGCA data showed that IndiGo had an ‘On Time Performance’ at 84.5 per cent.
The statement added that the recently introduced Pratt and Whitney engines in the aircraft need to be replaced due to dome reason and the lack of the engines lead to parking some aircrafts. Further the airlines claimed that the passengers were not unaware of this reports and were informed about this beforehand.
“Just last month we publicly disclosed that there have been days when we have parked as many as nine of our aircraft due to lack of spare engines. To avoid inconveniencing our customers, we had already factored in the reduced aircraft capacity while scheduling our flights.
We accommodated our customers on other flights well in advance and other than those days when an additional aircraft needs to grounded, there have been no unplanned cancellations due to lack of spare engines,” the statement read.
The statement however added that the roll out of the Goods and Service Tax (GST) did create a fiscal burden on the airline industry which was not expected, lead to some unplanned short term flight cancellation.
“This unpredictable situation did lead to some unplanned short-term flight cancellations and we have made every effort to inform our affected customers and provide them with alternative arrangements,” the statement read, adding that the airlines are engaged in discussions to sort out the matter.
This clarification from the passenger carrier IndiGo came after a report surfaced that the airline had cancelled approximately 80 flights as the airline grounded more airbus A320 NEO planes due to engine issues.
Reportedly, a total of 667 flights were cancelled by the IndiGo airlines between June 21 and July 3 this year, with 61 flights cancelled on June 27 alone, due to the grounding of these planes. (ANI)