On the rival’s selection day, crew members ‘get sick’ and affect 55% of the airline’s flights

Economic Times India reports this Sunday, July 3, India’s Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) launched an investigation after 55% of IndiGo’s domestic flights experienced delays on Saturday, July 2, even day on which the second phase of a recruitment campaign for competitor Air India took place.

The low-cost airline IndiGo is the largest airline in the country by number of passengers carried and has more than 250 aircraft of the Airbus A320, A320neo, A321, A321neo and ATR 72 models.

Air India was a state-owned company that was recently privatized, having just over 100 aircraft of the Airbus A319, A320, A320neo, A321, Boeing 777-200, 777-300ER and 787-8 models.

According to Indian media, the impact on IndiGo’s operations was caused by a substantial number of cabin crew members on sick leave, but they allegedly went to Air India’s recruitment drive, sources within the industry say. according to the PTI news agency.

Only 45.2% of IndiGo’s domestic flights were punctual on the day, according to data from the country’s Ministry of Civil Aviation website. In comparison, the performances of Air India, SpiceJet, Vistara, Go First and AirAsia India had, respectively, 77.1%, 80.4%, 86.3% and 92.3% of their flights on time, which indicates that this is not a general problem of the air market, as in Europe, for example, due to the lack of ground service personnel.

On Sunday, DGCA chief Arun Kumar said the aviation regulator was “investigating this”.