For the last few days, the media has been full of one news item, and that is the INDIGO CRISIS. Across the board, IndiGo Airlines started cancelling about 500+ domestic flights daily, and flyers all over the country faced hardships with cancelled flights, while airports were in total chaos. Now why this crisis developed so suddenly:
Key Reasons for Crisis
1 New Regulatory Norms– The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) introduced revised Flight Duty Time limitations (FDTL) to prevent pilot and enhance safety with the final phase becoming effective from 1st November, 2025. These rules mandated:
- An increase in mandatory weekly rest for crew from 36 to 48 hours.
- A longer night duty window (midnight to 6 am)
- A sharp reductions in night landing per pilot per week (from 6 to only 2)
2 IndiGo’s Planning Failure– Pilots unions and safety experts argued that while other airline prepared for these changes by hiring more staff, Indigo did not adequately plan its rosters or recruit enough pilots despite a two year preparatory window. The airline ran a highly efficient, high-frequency network that maximized crew hours, and its minimal staffing buffer (around 4% of crew strength) was insufficient to handle the new restrictions.
3 Compounding Factors– The situation was worsened by a ‘multitude of unforeseen operational challenges’:
- Winter Season Pressure– The crisis coincided with India’s peak winter travel and wedding season, a period of high demand and airport congestion.
- Technical Glitches– An Airbus 320 software advisory caused weekend delays that pushed flights past midnight, activating the new, stricter night-duty rules and causing cascading cancellations.
- Adverse Weather– Winter fog and other weather conditions at major northern airports added to the delays.
Consequences- The operational failure led to cancellations of over thousand flights in just a few days, stranding thousands of passengers at major airports like Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. This resulted in widespread passenger anger, a collapse in the airline’s on-time-performance, and a significant surge in airfares across all the other airlines.
In response, the government and the DGCA intervened, ordering IndiGo to process refunds quickly, capping airfares on affected routes, and temporarily relaxing some of the FDTL rules to help the airline to stabilize the operations.
Among all this domestic chaos, IndiGo did not cancel a Single International Flight, WHY?
The airlines avoided cancelling international flights for a few strong reasons:
1 Higher Revenue & Better Profit-International routes usually generate higher earnings in US Dollars, giving airlines more profit per passenger. So cancelling these flights would result in bigger financial losses.
2 Stricter Compensation Rules– International passengers are protected by stronger foreign regulations, which means airlines may have to pay heavy compensation if a flight is cancelled.
3 Lower Fuel Costs & Better Route Economics– Airlines often uplift fuel abroad where prices may be lower. So these routes naturally have better fuel cost efficiency and are more valuable to maintain.
4 Avoiding Global Reputation Damage– International flight cancellation get worldwide attention, affecting brand image. Protecting these routes helps Indigo maintain its global reputation.
In the end
As per aviation experts, the widespread domestic cancellations helped build public pressure around the FDTL rules, introduced by DGCA. This chaos helped push the narrative that the new FDTL rules were impractical and needed rollback.
This crisis has raised serious questions about operational planning, route priorities, and transparency. While the airline maintains that the disruptions were due to scheduling gaps during the rollout of new pilot duty rules, the experts believes that there is bigger pattern behind the scenes.
Everyone is asking questions about why international flights remain stable has opened a new debate about airlines strategy and passenger treatment. With thousand still affected, the public now wants clearer communications fairer policies, and better preparedness from one of India’s biggest airlines.
The facts remain that IndiGo indirectly blackmailed the DGCA, as they thought being a airline with more than 60% of market share, government in the end will wilt under public pressure and roll back the new FDLT rules, and they have partly succeeded in doing so, DGCA has relented and kept in abeyance the new rules for next three months.
My only contention here is- did DGCA think before framing these rules, they increased the rest period for crew and pilots by 33%, which indirectly meant that airlines will need at least 20% more crew members and pilots. Crew members are can be hired more, but to hire new pilots is a tough job, as the criteria for hiring new pilot is minimum experience of 1000 hours, so fresher can not be immediately hired. Secondly if an airline wants to hire pilots from other airline then they will have to wait minimum for one year, as all the airlines in India have policy that pilot has to give one year notice before leaving.
Let us wait and watch what will happen after three months?
Waiting for your views on this blog.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
8th December 2025