Indigo Chief Executive Pieter Elbers said the airline will support its staff and stand by them if unruly passengers misbehave with them.
This comes after several incidents of arguments between the cabin crew and passengers have sprung up in recent days in the country.
“At Indigo, we take pride in making sure that our customers have a hassle-free service and we train our cabin crew as well as the ground staff for that. I am proud of our cabin crew dealing with these situations. I think it is our job as management to support our crew and staff,” Elbers said while addressing a press conference at the new Goa airport.
The new airport in North Goa, which commenced operations on January 5, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 11, 2022.
IndiGo will operate 168 weekly flights between Goa’s second international airport at Mopa (Manohar International Airport) and eight domestic destinations -- Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Jaipur, and Ahmedabad.
Elbers told reporters that operations at the new Goa airport, in addition to the Dabolim airport, would cater to the high demand in Goa. “We have operations at Dabolim airport with a very significant number of flights. The ambitions for Goa and potential of Goa are big and will continue to grow. So, with that, we will be heading right here (Mopa). And whenever we will have opportunities in terms of slots and timings, we will add (flights) on the Dabolim airport as well,” he said.
The CEO also said that he sees a “healthy development of traffic” as people were not able to travel due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We have seen a very healthy development of traffic partly with the holiday season and festival season. From a holistic perspective, when we see the economic developments and broad wishes of people to travel and as we start to build our network in terms of connectivity, domestic connections and affordability, we look with a lot of confidence to the development of traffic,” he said.
Refuelling capacity at Goa
Elbers said the reduction in the Value added tax (VAT) in Goa on Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) is a stimulus for the airline.
Goa had reduced VAT on jet fuel from 18 percent to 8 percent on January 2.
“We fuel our aircraft in a way that fits our operation. We are not in the business of flying around in order to find the most optimal fuel. However, where it helps is how we develop our network and which points in our network are getting more frequencies and which are getting less frequencies. And if the VAT has been lowered, which is the case now from 18 percent to 8 percent, that is clearly a stimulus for us,” Elbers said.
“If we need to decide whether we are going to put a flight from destination ABC in India to Goa or to any other place, and here we pay 8 percent and somewhere else it would be 18 percent or more, then that is a big part of our operational costs. So, it really helps us to make a trade-off in terms of whether we develop our network,” he added.
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