IndiGo Airlines ranked among worst airlines globally by AirHelp

IndiGo Airlines ranked among worst airlines globally by AirHelp

Mangalore Today /Indian Express

New Delhi, December 05, 2024: India’s largest airline IndiGo has been listed among the world’s worst airlines by European air passenger claims processing and facilitating agency AirHelp, which has ranked the airline at the 103rd spot out of a total of 109 airlines in the rankings. Reacting to the AirHelp rankings, IndiGo has refuted the survey and even questioned its credibility.

AirHelp releases an annual ranking of international airlines and airports. The rankings for airlines are based on three criteria — on-time performance, customer opinion, and processing of compensation claims. According to AirHelp, the three criteria contribute to the airline’s score in equal measure, or 33.33 per cent each.

In its 2024 report, AirHelp gave IndiGo a score of 4.80, placing it at the 103rd spot among 109 airlines in the list. The only other Indian airline on the list is Air India, which has been ranked 61 with a score of 6.15. Brussels Airlines has been ranked at the pole position, followed by Qatar Airways, and United Airlines with scores of 8.12, 8.11, and 8.04, respectively.

“India’s aviation regulator DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation), publishes data on airline punctuality and customer complaints monthly. IndiGo has consistently scored high on punctuality and has the lowest customer complaint ratio for an airline of its size and scale of operations. The data published in the survey by AirHelp, an EU claim processing agency, does not report the sample size from India, and neither takes into account the methodology or compensation guidelines used by the global aviation industry — casting a doubt on its credibility,” IndiGo said in a statement.

IndiGo is India’s largest airline with a domestic market share of over 60 per cent. It is also among the top airlines globally by passenger volumes. In 2023, it flew over 100 million passengers across its domestic and international network.

“As India’s most preferred airline, IndiGo refutes the findings of this survey and reiterates its promise of on-time, affordable, courteous and hassle-free travel experience for its customers,” the airline added.

According to DGCA data, the airline has among the lowest ratio of passenger complaints to passengers ferried. In the DGCA’s October air traffic report, IndiGo’s number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried was 0.2. Vitara, which has now merged with Air India, was the only carrier that fared better than IndiGo in terms of passenger complaints in October, the DGCA data shows.

The DGCA monthly traffic report also mentions on-time performance of airlines for four metropolitan airports — Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai. In the October report, IndiGo was at the top of the list with an on-time performance score of 71.9 per cent.

It is not clear if AirHelp takes DGCA data into consideration for its rankings. According to the agency, it collects data from multiple commercial vendors and creates its “own sophisticated database of flight data”. AirHelp claims that it cross-references its statistics with “a variety of reliable sources including government agencies, airport databanks, flight-tracking vendors and historical resources”.