New Delhi: Aviation regulator DGCA is investigating the Air India Express cabin crew strike incident in May that resulted in several flight cancellations and the airline will be penalised in case there were any non-compliance with regulations, Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said on Thursday.
In response to queries in the Lok Sabha related to flight cancellations, Naidu said the ministry was ensuring that there were no cancellations and delays as he emphasised that Civil Aviation Requirements (CARs) were in place to ensure that passengers received compensation.
"We acknowledge that there has been an issue with Air India Express There were some internal issues with the crew as Air India Express was merging with AirAsia India and a mass strike happened (on May 7)," the minister said during the Question Hour. There were a lot of cancellations due to the strike.
"Once this issue started, the ministry got involved, DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) facilitated a lot of discussions with the airline, crew members and everything, and it was sorted out ... There was also a software glitch that happened. Because of the software glitch, the crew member data that was supposed to be with the airline, there was some problem and manually they were trying to enter (data) ... For everything to get back to normalcy, (it took) some time," the minister said.
While noting that there are CARs in place, Naidu said if airlines do not follow regulations, the ministry gets involved and ensures that passengers get a refund or readjustment in another flight. Citing an example, he said a penalty of Rs 10 lakh was imposed on Air India for not following certain guidelines.
"The Air India Express strike incident also ... The DGCA is going into depth and investigating the issue. If there seems to be any non-compliance from the airlines, then definitely we are going to penalise them and ensure that passenger is the top priority," Naidu said.
On May 7, around 200 cabin crew members of Tata Group-owned Air India Express went on strike to protest against alleged mismanagement at the airline, resulting in the cancellation of hundreds of flights. Consequently, the airline management terminated the services of 25 cabin crew members and warned the others to join work or face the same action.
The strike was called off on May 9 after a conciliation meeting between representatives of a union representing the cabin crew members and the management convened by the Chief Labour Commissioner (Central). The termination letters were also later withdrawn.
As many as 11 lakh passengers were impacted by flight delays this year till May, and airlines shelled out nearly Rs 13 crore for providing facilities to them, according to the Civil Aviation Ministry. In 2023, as many as 22.51 lakh passengers were impacted due to flight delays and carriers spent over Rs 26.53 crore for them.
The count stood at 14.83 lakh in 2022, and the amount shelled out by airlines in this regard stood at more than Rs 15.87 crore. The data was provided in a written reply to the Lok Sabha by Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol on Thursday.
As per the data for this year till May, the flight delays hit 11 lakh passengers, and airlines spent a little over Rs 12.85 crore to provide facilities to them. In 2021, as many as 8.03 lakh passengers were impacted and the amount spent by airlines stood at Rs 3.91 crore.
The data showed that in 2020, which was also the year when Covid hit the aviation sector, a total of 2.06 lakh passengers were impacted due to flight delays while the money spent by airlines for providing facilities to the passengers stood at Rs 62.07 lakh.
"Scheduled domestic airlines operate their flights, as per the schedules approved by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). However, at times flights are delayed due to various reasons, which include weather, technical, operational etc," the minister said.
