Air India has announced the launch of “FogCare” initiative that will help minimise flight disruptions due to fog.
Passenger-first initiative!
The “FogCare” initiative, which will initially be launched for flights departing from and arriving at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, aims to take care of unforeseen circumstances such as delays and cancellations of flights amid thick fog that engulfs northern India during the winter season. Under the new FogCare initiative, Air India will be taking proactive steps to isolate the impact of fog on flight operations, which usually takes place in the early mornings and late evenings, but often also cascades throughout the day.
So you may be asking how will we, the passengers, benefit from this? Well, as a part of this initiative, the airline will proactively reach out to customers during periods of Fog and give them easy options to reschedule or cancel their impacted flights at no extra cost. Passengers of impacted flights can make the decision to not travel to the airport and avoid the inconvenience of long waits. This will also serve to ease congestion at the airports. User-friendly e-mails, calls, and SMS with flight-specific advisories will be sent to passengers on impacted flights, giving them easy options to minimize inconvenience due to fog-related disruptions.
We are pleased to launch the FogCare initiative, a customer centric measure to ensure the best possible experience for our customers. This is one more step in our journey to becoming a world-class airline and will significantly improve the passenger experience during fog affected days. We will strive to give our customers up to date information on whether their flight has been impacted by fog and help them make the best choice given the circumstances. By proactively tackling the issue, we will be able to maintain the overall network schedule integrity as best as possible, and offer a better experience to all passengers, particularly those on flights unaffected by fog in Delhi, who would otherwise have been subjected to the cascading effects of rolling fog delays.
said Rajesh Dogra, Chief Customer Experience Officer and Global Head of Airport Operations, Air India.
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Air India added that it is also ensuring adequate availability of aircraft, pilots, maintenance, and cabin crew to be able to deal with fog-related exigencies. With a fully trained cockpit crew, that is equipped with the capability to operate in low visibility conditions through the CAT-III Instrument Landing System (ILS), Air India says that it has geared up to minimize disruption due to fog.
Great!
Air India, under the new ownership of TATA Group, is undergoing a string of changes currently. The launch of this type of initiative seems to be in the right direction to make the passenger experience better and smoother.
The fog in Delhi in the winter season can sometimes be very thick, which also sometimes results in the temporary suspension of operations at the airport, leaving passengers stranded for hours and ruining their plans. Now-a-days, the technology has become very advanced in helping flight operations centre of various airlines know what the weather will be for the next few hours beforehand. And Air India seems to be using exactly this as a tool to improve its passenger experience.
Now there’s one more reason to fly the legacy carrier, particularly out of Delhi in the winter season.
Meanwhile, Air India recently announced that it will lease six Boeing B777-300ER aircraft to expedite expansion.
Featured image by JetPhotos
What do you think of Air India’s FogCare initiative? Do you think this will help us improve the passenger experience? Let me know in the comments section below.
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