Amid hundreds of flight cancellations and the ensuing chaos, IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers sent a letter to employees on Friday acknowledging that the airline had failed to deliver on its promise to serve customers well and provide a good experience.
“The past few days have been difficult for many of our customers and colleagues at IndiGo. We serve nearly 380,000 customers a day and we want each and every one of them to have a good experience. We have not been able to deliver on that promise in recent days and have publicly apologized,” Elbers said in an internal communication accessed by Hindustan Times.
IndiGo’s CEO further highlighted the issues that led to their failure, saying, “The accumulation of several operational issues – including minor technology glitches, schedule changes, adverse weather conditions, increased congestion in the aviation ecosystem and implementation of the newly issued FDTL norms – negatively worsened and created a cascading impact on our operations.”
Elbers’ message to staff comes amid chaos at India’s airports, with more than 300 IndiGo flights canceled since Tuesday, leaving thousands of fliers stranded.
The IndiGo CEO also issued a lengthy thank-you note to airline staff working “tirelessly” to restore normal services and expressed his gratitude to “pilots, cabin crew, OCC, engineers, customer support, digital staff, front-line staff at the airport and their leadership teams”.
He also thanked airports, ATC and regulators for “doing their best to help at this difficult time”.
Normalizing operations “is not an easy goal”
Elbers said the airline had “faced tough moments before,” urging everyone to turn “challenges into triumphs.”
“Our immediate goal is to normalize our operations and get punctuality back on track in the coming days, which is not an easy goal,” Elbers said, explaining that the size, scale and complexity of IndiGo’s network make it a challenging endeavor.
Elbers also recalled how efficiently IndiGo handled the software update to fix the Airbus Air 320 glitch and asked the employees to come together and help the airline through this difficult period.
“Just a few days ago, we performed remarkably well as a unified team to achieve the unimaginable feat of upgrading 200 (A320) aircraft in less than 24 hours. I am confident that we can all rise to this challenge. Together as one team, we will overcome this challenge and become even stronger,” said Elbers.
