IndiGo Taps Captain John Illson for Independent Review of Flight Disruptions
Introduction
IndiGo the largest airline, has an appointment with Chief Aviation Advisors LLC in order to conduct an independent expert review, along with the evaluation of the current functional disruptions and the contributing factors.
IndiGo appoints Captain John Illson, who is regarded as a veteran with more than four decades of aviation experience throughout the significant international carriers, IATA, ICAO and FAA. The board of the airline shifts towards evaluating the compliance gaps and rostering failures after regulator counterattack.
Reasons for conducting an independent review and evaluation
By considering the current extensive Indigo flight disruptions to its flight operations, IndiGo, the nation’s leading airline, has made a decision to involve external specialists in order to conduct an independent evaluation and review of the disruption, along with the factors which contributed to it.
With this, passenger traffic at few of the airports like Chandigarh has shown signals of recovery.
Benefits of the interdependent review
- As per an IndiGo spokesperson, with the approval of the board in place, the assessment will start as soon as possible, and the independent specialist assessor will be submitting an inclusive report to the board upon completion.
- The organisation also states that Captain John Illson brings huge proficiency within the international aviation approach, novel aircraft technologies, setting global standards, safety leadership and modified consulting.
- According to the LinkedIn profile of Illson, the former airline captain, who served as a senior advisor to the American aviation regulator FAA on the growth of approaches to improve the security oversight system of the FAA.
Objectives of the review
- The significant objective is to conduct an independent IndiGo root cause analysis of the current functional disruptions, apart from the prospects for enhancement.
- The root cause analysis will be conducted by the external technical aviation expert review who will work with the management.
- Moreover, the decision follows the suggestions of the IndiGo crisis management group (CMG), which is constituted by the board of IndiGo.
- As a significant part of its evaluation, the CMG advised commissioning a sovereign specialist review into the matter. Whereas this is considered to be a probe by the organisation, the government is also enquiring into this particular issue. Thus, a four-member DGCA panel is monitoring the exceptional crisis.
- Apart from the own root cause analysis by IndiGo, a government-ordered search by an inquiry board constituted by the sector regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is already on track.
- Last Friday, on 5th December, the panel was being constituted where the crest of the disruption with approximately 1,600 IndiGo flights were cancelled within a single day. It was served 15 days to present this report.
Questioning on the effectiveness if the high-profile board of the airline
Experts in the aviation sector, along with the former bureaucrats, had questioned the efficiency of the high-profile board of the airline. It also questioned whether it performed enough during the months, resulting in a massive functional crisis, which brought the nation’s aviation system to its knees.
Mehta states that the board was engaged and had acquired the essential data regarding the novel crest rest rules through the airline’s management. However, he did not mention whether the board was conscious that the IndiGo was unsuspecting of the novel rules and whether it made any form of intervention within the run-up towards the rollout of the second stage of the Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) standards from 1st November.
In the video statement, at the time of declaring that the airline’s board will involve an independent specialist for independent review IndiGo for the purpose of conducting root cause analysis, Mehta had refused the criticism that the crisis was being engineered and that the airline made a strong attempt to create an impact on the government over the revised rules of Flight Duty Time Limitation FDTL.
Furthermore, Mehta, a former long-term chairman of the Shell Group of Companies within India, stated that the claims that the board of the airline was not involved in the FDTL issue are not appropriate. Thus, Mehta apologised for the disruption, which affected 10,000 passengers.
Reasons for facing network-wide disruptions
- The primary reason for facing the network-wide disruption experienced by IndiGo is the inappropriate preparation of the carrier for the second stage of the novel crew.
- Against the novel standards, IndiGo was short on crew, along with coordination with certain other aspects. This in turn resulted in an extensive disruption within the operations of the airline, which led to a number of IndiGo cancellations during the past week.
Enactment of the new FDTL rules
The novel FDTL rules specify more rest for rationalisation and pilots of their flying responsibilities, especially late-night functions, within a bid to efficiently manage pilot exhaustion. This is considered to be a core risk to aviation security.
These novel standards, which were predetermined during the past year, were being delayed in their adaptation and came into effect in two stages, that is, from 1st July and 1st November, with the second stage rollout hitting the organisation subsequently.
During the review meetings, the company accepted that the disruptions had occurred mainly through planning gaps and misjudgment in adopting the second stage of the novel FDTL rules. Here, the airline stated that the definite requirement of the crew for the novel rules surpassed what it had previously said, according to the DGCA.
In terms of the disruption scale, the DGCA in the past week sanctioned the company a momentary one-time exclusion from particular night operations-associated alterations within the novel FDTL standards for its Airbus A320 pilots.
With this, the temporary rollback that will be positioned till 10th February assists the company to alleviate the business operations and get it back on track in collaboration. Along with this, DGCA also sanctioned certain other provisional relaxations to the organisation in an effort to ensure that the operations of the flight stay steady.
