Focus on efficiency or you will lose customers: Jytoriaditya Scindia warns airline CEOs after fog fiasco
Civil aviation minister Jytoriaditya Scindia on Thursday warned that airlines should improve their efficiency or risk losing customers. He also said that the government will take strict action against airlines who don’t follow the regulations regarding passenger rights.
“I would urge the airlines to not only focus on passenger volume but also improve their efficiency.
Growth cannot come at the cost of efficiency. I feel there is a lot left to be desired.
I will tell airlines to please look in the mirror. They need to pull up,” Scindia said in a meeting with airline CEOs.
IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson, Vinod Kannan, CEO of Vistara and Aloke Singh, CEO of Air India Express were in attendance.
The minister’s comments come amidst the massive disruption caused at Delhi Airport on Sunday due to severe fog that caused significant disruptions to flight operations leading to delay of over 500 flights.
Operations at the airport, which is India's busiest in terms of footfall, has been severely impacted this winter as it has been unable to restart the runway which has been closed for maintenance since September.
With the runway not operating, the airport was left with only a single runway capable of handling low visibility operations.
The original plan of reopening the runway on 15 December has been postponed twice as construction was delayed due to the G20 summit and construction ban to curb pollution.
Following the disruption, civil aviation regulator DGCA has released a Standard Operating Procedure(SOP) to better manage passengers during delays or cancellations caused by fog or other unfavorable weather conditions. According to that, DGCA has asked airlines to cancel flights that are anticipated to
