New Delhi, Dec 11 (IANS) Limping back to normalcy, IndiGo on Thursday offered travel vouchers worth Rs 10,000 to customers who were severely impacted during the flight disruption earlier this month.

The airline “regrettably acknowledged” that several people travelling between December 3 and 5 were stranded for many hours at major airports nationwide. The crisis caused thousands of cancellations and delays, keeping passengers in long queues.

“We will offer travel vouchers worth Rs 10,000 to such severely impacted customers. These travel vouchers can be used for any future IndiGo journey for the next 12 months,” an IndiGo spokesperson said in a statement.

The compensation is in addition to the commitment under the existing government guidelines, as per which, IndiGo will provide compensation of Rs 5000 to Rs 10,000, depending on the block time of the flight, to those customers whose flights were cancelled within 24 hours of departure time.

IndiGo also noted that “all necessary refunds for cancelled flights have been initiated”, including bookings through a travel partner platform.

The airline said that it is “committed” to restoring a “safe, smooth, and reliable” experience.

Earlier in the day, IndiGo Chairman Vikram Singh Mehta said that the airline’s Board will bring in external technical experts to work with the management and identify the root causes behind last week’s massive flight disruptions.

He said the experts will help ensure that such large-scale operational failures never happen again.

Meanwhile, the company stated that all destinations in the airline’s network have been fully connected since December 8, and operations have stabilised since December 9.

On December 8, it flew more than 1,750 flights with just one same-day cancellation, and on December 9, it had over 1,800 flights and zero cancellations. Over 1,900 flights took off on December 10, while just two were cancelled on the same day.

On Thursday, IndiGo said it expects “to operate more than 1,950 flights with approximately 300,000 customers”.

–IANS

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