(TAN): Air India recently announced its “FogCare” initiative to mitigate the impact of disruptions due to fog on passengers. This initiative, which will initially be launched for flights departing from and arriving at IGI airport, New Delhi, 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, the Star Alliance member said in a news release.
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.
Air India 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. Customer-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.
Commenting on this initiative, Rajesh Dogra, chief customer experience officer and global head of Airport Operations, Air India said, “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 willstrive 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.”
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The airline 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 has geared up to minimize disruption due to fog.
