Indigo Mayhem
Raghu
INDIGO, once the poster boy of private passenger airlines in India, went into a tailspin a week ago, cancelling over 1600 flights out of a total of about 2300, causing mayhem around the country. It left over a lakh passengers stranded in different cities and airports, patients unable to avail important medical treatment, marriages delayed or unattended, examinations missed, businesses hampered, luggage in different locations. With Indigo being by far the market leader with about 60 per cent market share, virtually the entire Indian passenger air travel sector stood disrupted.
As events unfolded, it became clear that this was a complete failure of planning and management by Indigo, stemming from monopolistic arrogance and a focus on reckless expansion. Revised Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) for pilots notified by the civil aviation regulator Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in January 2024 but came into effect only on 1 November 2025. The revised duty hours of pilot had been instituted in response to safety concerns, complaints by pilots of overwork and fatigue, and several near-miss incidents, reducing the number of hours (10) pilots could fly without a break, maximum weekly duty hours (48 compared to the earlier 36) and number of night landings (maximum 2 instead of 6) etc. Due to implementation of the new rules, with the heavy winter schedule kicking in but not having properly planned flight schedules and pilot rosters accordingly, Indigo found itself short of pilots eligible to fly leading to cascading delays and cancellations till its entire system essentially ground to a halt.
While Indigo must of course carry the direct responsibility, the mayhem was also due to clear regulatory and oversight failures by DGCA. Responsibility must also be borne by the Union Government’s Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) which takes over regulatory functions whenever it sees fit, undermining DGCA’s independence and functional autonomy. MOCA also failed to grasp and take action on structural weaknesses in the Indian civil aviation sector especially as regards human resources and other capabilities in keeping with the rapid expansion of air passenger traffic in India.
In response to the show cause notice issued to it by DGCA threatening possible penal regulatory action, Indigo attributed the system collapse to multiple factors but tried to mask its pilot shortage and related planning failure. In fact, Indigo has been expanding way beyond its capacity for quite some time. Indigo has not only been filling the vacuum left by the earlier collapse of Sahara, Kingfisher-Deccan and Jet Airways, besides the limping Spice Jet, and slow movement by Air India-Vistara on its recovery path after acquiring the privatized national carrier, it has also been expanding aggressively both domestically and on international routes. In particular, Indigo expanded its night flights considerably. It has even ordered many new aircraft in anticipation of future expansion.
However, its pilot strength has not kept pace. Combined with Indigo’s “lean staffing and operations” model which squeezes the last possible hours out of flying crew, this strained the airline’s crew roster to its limits. Indigo had in fact vigorously opposed DGCA’s FDTL when it was first introduced. Yet, earlier this year Indigo submitted a packed winter schedule to DGCA. With virtually no buffer reserve of pilots to fill the gap left by the reduced pilot flying hours under the revised FDTL, cancellations inevitably followed and cascaded. Clearly, Indigo did nothing between January 2024, when the revised FDTL was first announced, and 1 November 2025 when it took effect, to draw up flight schedules compatible with the necessarily shortened pilot duty roster. Other airlines did, and escaped the chaos.
There are disturbing reports (Mumbai Mirror, 6 December) emanating from confidential press interviews with unnamed Indigo pilots where the latter state that Indigo did not assign them duties when they volunteered despite the cancellations and idle aircraft. The reports suggest that Indigo deliberately allowed the situation to unravel so as to claim that the revised FDTL was unworkable, and to put pressure on DGCA to roll it back. However the purported plan rebounded on Indigo itself.
The question arises, though, what DGCA was doing all this while. In particular, why did DGCA approve Indigo’s winter schedule, when it knew that Indigo would not have sufficient pilots eligible to fly the enlarged schedule given the revised FDTL? It is precisely the task of the regulator to exercise oversight over airlines’ operations and capabilities, particularly where safety is involved. Ironically, in the face of the ensuing chaos and the public clamour to restore a semblance of order in passenger flights, DGCA’s order to help ease the chaos permitting Indigo, and only Indigo among all airlines, to ignore the revised FDTL till 20 February 2025, perversely allows Indigo to continue with its earlier pilot-stressing duty hours, thus once again endangering aircraft, crew and passengers which the revised FDTL was devised to obviate in the first place. DGCA holds considerable responsibility for the mess created by Indigo.
The Union Ministry of Civilian Aviation is no less responsible. In India, an independent aviation regulator, or accident investigation body for that matter, are myths, despite what the international UN body ICAO mandates. Airlines know that they can always go to MOCA over the head of DGCA which is equally conscious of the pecking order in which MOCA calls the shots. In this case too, MOCA had silently watched the crisis build up and finally pushed DGCA to issue the above horrific order. Underlining its superiority, MOCA then ordered Indigo to cut back its flights first by 5 per cent and later by 10 per cent. Indigo now states it may even roll back flights by 20 per cent! But if the number of flights is indeed being reduced, then there is no need to exempt Indigo from the revised FDTL! In the world of DGCA and MOCA, logic evidently has no place.
Beyond the immediate crisis, all this reveals an even more dire situation confronting India’s civil aviation sector, while the Union Government, MoCA and DGCA are all asleep at the wheel. Air passenger traffic has exploded in India, along with civil aviation infrastructure and capacities. However, regulation has not kept pace and any semblance of planning has been put aside as an outdated ‘socialist’ concept even though planning ahead is obviously a core corporate management task.
India is the world’s fastest growing air passenger market, with projected annual growth rates of over 8-10 per cent, slated to be the third largest market after China and the US. India, currently with close to 200 million passengers annually is estimated to have 300 million by 2030 and 1 billion by2040. To keep pace with this demand, another 1700 aircraft are expected to be added over the next few years over the 800 or so currently in operation. An estimated 30,000 pilots are estimated to be required in India.
Yet this expansion is taking place with little planning, weak regulation and a laissez faire “growth at any costs” attitude. Regulation in India does not mean balancing interests of all stakeholders, but mostly advancing corporate interests, as often even mandated formally. Even more than the regulator, the Union Government is mainly interested in pushing business and corporate interests whatever the cost, despite the bitter experiences in civil aviation which is littered with the corpses of collapsed airlines, bad loans and numerous jobs lost. There is an acute shortage of pilots in India, especially of commanders requiring ample experience, causing a bottleneck at the top of the pyramid, and no planned system to build these capacities. Pilots are being pushed out into the arms of foreign airlines attracted by better wages and working conditions including regulated working hours.
The Union Government can ill afford to leave all this to the short-term interests of private airlines, and needs to step in. However, crony monopolies or duopolies will always be inefficient, prone to failure and requiring to be bailed out from time to time.
