Yes, I do. IndiGo’s recent mass flight cancellations led to thousands of passengers being stranded across India for days. People missed exams, doctor’s appointments and important commitments. Inexcusably, there was hardly any communication or support from the airline, and its approach was rude and dismissive.
To add insult to injury, rival airlines — Air India and SpiceJet — chose this period to cash in, instead of offering relief. Domestic fares surged, with tickets priced at Rs 70,000 in some sectors, until a cap was imposed.
Now, there are memes and videos floating on social media where people are sarcastically asking Naresh Goyal’s Jet Airways and Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines to return. It may be in jest, but it reveals something important — the profound lack of empathy among airlines today.
Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways may have folded and their owners may be termed as “failures”, but we remember them for offering hospitality, customer-centric service, and personalised attention, even in economy class. I know their balance sheets might not be as healthy as Indigo’s is, but darting across the world inside a tube is a non-human experience and Mallya and Goyal made the ordeal comfortable, special even. Can we say the same for any of the domestic airlines today?
Had Mallya or Goyal’s airlines been around, their leadership strategy to handle this situation would have been different, perhaps being more straightforward, putting passenger comfort first, and preventing the situation from going so out of hand.
December happens to be peak travel time and this chaos was a long time coming (airlines had 18 months to prepare). IndiGo could have certainly made arrangements for a potential crew shortage. And the bare minimum — giving food to stranded passengers and keeping them updated about what’s going on — would have gone a long way. Instead, the crisis exposed IndiGo’s profit-over-everything philosophy. And no, a full-page ad and refunds after days of waiting do not make up for the ordeal.
IndiGo may feel that this crisis will blow over in the next few days, things will go back to normal, and there aren’t even that many options out there (after all, it controls 65% of the domestic aviation market).
But this incident won’t be forgotten in a hurry. The airline has lost precious goodwill by being so short-sighted. Now, every time a passenger has to fly somewhere, they will think twice before choosing IndiGo. As Warren Buffett famously said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” We can only hope that this incident serves as a wake-up call to treat passengers better.
The question to ask is — Can Indigo’s monopoly be broken? And will you as a customer still want to fly IndiGo?