Terminal illness: How passengers have been hit by flight cancellations

Over the past few weeks, the struggle for survival at Jet Airways, shortage of pilots at IndiGo Airlines and the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes at SpiceJet have resulted in scores of flights being cancelled. Passengers are vexed by the inconvenience and rising airfares. Things could deteriorate if the proposed financial salvage of Jet Airways fails and IndiGo’s operational troubles prolong.

Indeed, 2019 could prove worse than calendar 2018, when there was a sharp spike in the number of domestic air passengers affected by flight cancellations. From about 1.68 lakh in 2017, the number of passengers impacted shot up by more than 80 per cent to 3.08 lakh in 2018, according to data from aviation regulator DGCA.

From about 1 in every 1,000 in 2017, the number of domestic passengers affected by flight cancellations in 2018 rose to more than 2 in every 1,000. This number shot up to 3 in every 1,000 in January 2019 and is certain to have increased in February and March 2019 when the woes at Jet, IndiGo and SpiceJet manifested.

IndiGo’s dubious distinction

The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines has been increasing — from an average of 0.7 per cent in 2017 to 1.11 per cent in 2018 and to 1.81 per cent in January 2019. The sharp jump in impacted passengers in 2018 was primarily on account of IndiGo, the country’s largest airline. From about 52,000 in 2017, the number of passengers affected by IndiGo’s cancellations jumped more than three-fold to 1.75 lakh in 2018. Nearly 6 out of every 10 impacted passengers in 2018 were IndiGo customers, up from 3 in 2017.

Among the reasons for this deterioration were the airline’s ongoing troubles with its A320neo aircraft and the grounding of some of these planes last year. Also, Air India, AirAsia India and Vistara saw a 50-75 per cent jump in the number of affected passengers. In contrast, Jet Airways, SpiceJet and GoAir improved their performance with the number of impacted passengers 5-30 per cent lower in 2018 compared with 2017.

Compensation falls

Surprisingly, despite the near doubling in the overall number of passengers affected by cancellations, the compensation paid to them by airlines dipped about 7 per cent to ₹5.8 crore in 2018 from ₹6.25 crore in 2017. That happened for two reasons: one, airlines that did better on cancellations in 2018 such as Jet and SpiceJet paid less compensation than in 2017.

More importantly, the increase in compensation paid by most airlines that fared badly on cancellations was far lower than the increase in their affected passenger numbers. For instance, IndiGo paid just 25 per cent more compensation in 2018 compared with 2017, against a three-fold jump in affected passenger numbers. Also, Air India paid just 4 per cent more in compensation despite a 50 per cent jump in the number of affected passengers.

A possible explanation for this is that the airlines may be, in most cases, informing passengers about flight cancellations at least 24 hours in advance — in which case, per DGCA rules, the airlines can avoid paying compensation. Or it could be that fliers are unaware about their compensation rights (up to ₹10,000 per ticket) and airlines are not volunteering on their own to pay even in the case of last-minute cancellations. IndiGo did not respond to queries.

An Air India spokesperson said that the modest increase in the compensation payout in 2018 despite a sharp jump in passengers affected by cancellations was due to many factors, including scheduled cancellation of flights and force majeure reasons. He also added that at times passengers do not claim any compensation from airlines.

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