Due to airline operations, 7 out of 10 travelers had to reschedule or cancel and demanded direct refunds

According to a LocalCircles poll, over seven out of ten travelers had to deal with cancellations or rescheduling at least once in the previous year for “internal operational reasons” of the airline.

Of the 11,296 respondents to the survey, 20% said they had experienced cancellations or rescheduling of this kind “4-6 times,” while 30% reported encountering it “2-3 times.” About 20% of respondents said that airline operations “once” resulted in cancellations and rescheduling. Nearly 20% of respondents said they had never experienced such rescheduling or cancellations.

Approximately 90% of travelers expressed their desire for the government to require airlines to reimburse them for 25–30% of the ticket price as a penalty in the event that flights are canceled or postponed for internal reasons.

The survey report stated, “The main complaint raised by travelers is the unfair competition where airlines refuse to board travelers who arrive at the check-in counter even a few minutes late and keep the extra money they charge for fare differences while at the same time they are not penalized for flight delays, rescheduling, or cancellations due to airline-related issues.”

In order to prevent delays caused by internal issues, airlines may be compelled to make sure they are better equipped with the necessary resources, therefore the regulator must intervene and impose the appropriate fines in this situation. This is anticipated to boost air traveler satisfaction levels in India by increasing the aviation ecosystem’s overall on-time performance, it said.

The aviation watchdog, DGCA, recently fined Air India and SpiceJet Rs 30 lakh each for failing to roster pilots for flights conducted under poor visibility. “The DGCA discovered that Air India and SpiceJet did not roster CAT II/III and LVTO qualified pilots for some of the flights after analyzing the flight delay/cancellation/diversion-related data submitted by scheduled airlines for December 2023,” an official said.

Operating flights in poor visibility situations is covered under CAT II/III. The term Low Visibility Take-Off is LVTO.

Air India and SpiceJet have been fined Rs 30 lakh each, under two directives from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The DGCA had earlier this month sent show-cause notices to SpiceJet and Air India for failing to send pilots qualified to fly in poor visibility situations after a number of planes were diverted at the Delhi airport in late December due to thick fog.

Dense fog caused approximately 60 planes operated by different airlines to be diverted at the Delhi airport on December 25–28 of last year, severely disrupting flight operations.