The Hindu Business Line : For passengers, Diwali was a day of cancelled flights

New Delhi, Oct. 29 Domestic air travellers were a harried lot on Diwali day. Almost all airlines cancelled flights because of lack of traffic. However, they said the cancellations were due to “technical” reasons.

In Chennai alone, Air India combined five flights. It operated just two of the four daily flights to Delhi. A spokesperson for Jet Airways said that several flights out of the metro cities were combined during Diwali. However, private airlines were unwilling to disclose precisely how many flights had been “combined”.

Passengers are unlikely to receive any help from the regulator. Sources in the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) told Business Line that while “technically and legally” airlines should not cancel scheduled flights, there is little that can be done to stop this.

“A show-cause notice is generally served on the airline if there are large-scale cancellations. Their reply is closely scrutinised. Generally, the standard reply is that flights are cancelled or combined due to pilot shortage and having normal operations may affect the safety of passengers and aircraft,” said a DGCA official.

The newly opened airport at Hyderabad also saw a dip in the number of flights handled. “On Diwali, the airport managed 115 air traffic movements on domestic aircraft, down from 135 domestic aircraft handled the previous day. Almost all the major airlines combined flights and it will be unfair to say one combined more flights than the other,” said an airport official.

Delhi-Mumbai tab

The situation in Mumbai and Delhi airports was no better. While Mumbai airport handled 480 aircraft, down from the October daily average of 580-600 aircraft, Delhi reported a drop of more than 100 aircraft handled. Sources indicated that most of the drop in aircraft handled was due to domestic airlines cancelling flights.

But the industry felt that passengers had been given adequate notice. “The flight schedule for Diwali was fed into the system several days in advance, so where is the question of a passenger finding out at the last minute,” said a senior official of a low-cost airline.

Justifying the cancellation, many felt that airlines were well within their right to take any step to manage their operations. “Airlines would earlier operate flights with just a handful of passengers. But now, with the industry in doldrums, every one is being careful about the bottomline,” an airline official said when asked why so many flights had been combined.

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