But not all is well, show flight rota silent drop-offs
Times of India | 9 December 2025
Kolkata: IndiGo Airlines on Monday scheduled 92 departures from the city, and all the flights left, many of them on time. However, that is only half the story. The other half, which did not quite meet the public eye, was about the 37 flights that were cancelled on Monday. Normally, the cancellation of so many flights would cause a flutter at the airport and angry demonstrations by passengers. But these flights were the silent ‘drop-offs' from the rota that indicate that all's not well yet.
Aishwarya Mitra, who works as a creative head at an advertisement agency in Delhi, found her morning flight 6E 2588 was cancelled after she did the web check-in on Sunday night. She demonstrated outside the airport's IndiGo counter for three hours on Monday morning, after which the staff were compelled to put her on an evening flight.
"I generally don't lose my cool, but on Monday, I was furious. I have to be present in office on Tuesday. I can't miss work any more," Mitra said.
Tripura University English department professor Somdev Banik was booked on flight 6E 6171 to Agartala. He was about to do his web check-in on Sunday when he got an email telling him the flight was cancelled. "The airline could have accommodated me on flights that were operating to Agartala later in the day. But I bought a ticket on an Air India flight," he said.
Rishwav Mondal (22), a resident of Thakurpukur, was booked on IndiGo flight 6E2119 to Delhi on Monday morning, which the airline cancelled on Sunday night. "The airline cancelled our flight after we did web check-in and got boarding passes. My mother informed her workplace, and they have rescheduled our tickets for next week. But I was surprised when I saw that IndiGo officially didn't announce the morning flight in the list of cancellations, and instead claimed it had cut down on the number of cancellations. I don't know what the airline is trying to achieve with such false messages," said Mondal.
Monosij Bhattacharya, a senior bank executive, is furious after his holiday plans have gone haywire after IndiGo cancelled his Tuesday flight and rescheduled the family of four on three different flights. "The airline cancelled the original flight and then allotted my elderly parents, me, and my wife on different planes to Mumbai the day after. I can't take a chance by travelling separately, considering my parents' health. To make things worse, we had an onward holiday trip planned at Kochi, which had to be cancelled because of this fiasco. I now have to re-plan my holiday, paying thousands extra," said Bhattacharya.
IndiGo, in a statement on Monday, said all cancellations in Monday's schedule were executed by Sunday, ensuring advance notifications were sent to customers. The airline added that it operated over 1,800 flights on Monday across India, up from 1,650 on Sunday.