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DGCA grants IndiGo CEO, Accountable Manager 24-hour extension to repond to show cause notices

NEW DELHI: Aviation watchdog DGCA on Sunday gave more time to IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers and the Accountable Manager Isidro Porqueras to submit their responses to the show causes notices seeking their explanations on the flight disruptions. Both have been granted 24 hours more or time till 6 pm on Monday to submit their replies, a senior official said on Sunday. For six days in a row, IndiGo flight operations have been significantly disrupted resulting in massive flight cancellations and delays impacting travel plans of thousands of passengers. Against this backdrop, the regulator had issued the show cause notices. In the show cause notices issued on Saturday, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had asked Elbers and Porqueras to give their replies by Sunday evening. The official said the deadline for replies were extended following requests from both the airline executives. The two executives on Sunday had sought additional time for a response citing operational constraints due to the scale of its nationwide operations and multiple unavoidable factors that contributed to disruptions across several airports, the official said. According to the official, DGCA continues to monitor the situation closely. According tonews agency PTI , the airline is operating 1,650 flights of its 2,300 daily domestic and international flights on Sunday, after the carrier's schedule chaos over the past few days led to hundreds of cancellations and delays, affecting thousands of passengers. The airline has so far processed refunds totalling Rs 610 crore and delivered 3,000 pieces of baggage to passengers across the country as of Saturday, the government saidon Sunday. Earlier today, the Civil Aviation Ministry website reported that the airline's on-time performance from six metro airports had improved to 20.7 per cent on Saturday. IndiGo said it is expecting to stabilise the operations by December 10 against the earlier anticipated timeline of December 10-15. On Friday, IndiGo cancelled about 1,600 of its 2,300 daily flights. Disruptions eased slightly on Saturday, with cancellations dropping to around 800 , according to sources. (With inputs from PTI) IndiGo flight disruptions ease, cancellations drop to 650 on Sunday; 'step by step we're getting back,' says CEO Is IndiGo too big to fail? And what about lack of pilots leading to the flight chaos theory?