Top News

The IndiGo flight disruption has left many stranded in airports, and the brunt of their anger seemed to have fallen on the ground staff.

Several incidents have been reported in which rightfully enraged passengers are unleashing their anger on the employees sitting on desks. Shouting, demanding, the chaos of it all being dumped on the staff.

But their only real ‘fault’ was being on duty that day.

The Federation of Indian Pilots has alleged that IndiGo, despite getting a two-year preparatory window before the full implementation of new flight duty and rest period norms for cockpit crew, “inexplicably” adopted a “hiring freeze,” which many have attributed as the cause of the mass flight cancellations.

The IndiGo CEO, Pieter Elbers, said that ‘well over’ 1,000 flights had been cancelled on Friday, December 5 alone.

In Mumbai, at least 165 flights were cancelled, 102 in Bengaluru, 92 in Hyderabad and 235 flights in Delhi.

On ground staff face passengers’ rage

This chaos had thrown airports in major cities into disarray, with passengers hungry, exhausted, and waiting for hours, even days, with no clear answers, only speculation.

And that frustration had to be directed somewhere. Unfortunately, it fell on the IndiGo staff, working onsite at the airports.

Several users online have come in support of the frontline employees, who had to deal with the mess that was the mass cancellation. Most of these were women employees who were often being severely harassed by angry passengers who had nobody else to be mad at.

Other outraged citizens called for accountability from the high-ranking officials, as they remain answerable for the massive mayhem created.

‘Down, down IndiGo’

In Bengaluru airport, viral videos showed a group of passengers chanting “Down with IndiGo! Down with IndiGo!”

In one instance, a concerned father in the crowd yelled at the staff, demanding a sanitary pad for his daughter, who was on her period. While his urgency was real, the employees on the ground were the ones facing his anger, even though they had very limited ability to help.

In another incident, a foreign national, reportedly from France, frustrated and angry, got onto the counter demanding that the situation get better.

Groom misses wedding, widow stuck with coffin

In a queue of passengers, a man was seen explaining to the staff that it was his own wedding he had to attend. He attempted to show the invitation card, trying to make light of the situation, helpless, as the wedding date had already passed.

A woman travelling from Shillong to Kolkata was stranded at the airport with the coffin of her recently deceased husband, who was to be buried in his hometown, Kolkata.

A team of youngsters who were supposed to participate in a Hackathon in Guwahati were forced not to attend it, as their connecting flight from Kolkata to Ahmedabad was cancelled.

“Our hard work of 6-7 months is now wasted. We are returning home. Such opportunities are rare…We were selected in the first attempt, but due to flight cancellation, we are unable to go ahead. We were a team of 6 people, and we were accompanied by 2 mentors.”

These are real stories of people stranded from their destinations, while airline staff manage the consequences of the company’s pilot scheduling issues, with the situation at airports remaining critical.