India’s largest airline, IndiGo, is battling the worst crisis in its 20-year history, with at least 2,000 flights canceled since December 2.
IndiGo, which holds a market share of around 65%, canceled more than 1,000 flights just on Friday, leaving thousands of passengers stranded at major airports across India.
Other airlines hiked their prices on popular routes amid the chaos, prompting the government to cap the price surge to “ensure that citizens who urgently need to travel — including senior citizens, students, and patients — are not subjected to financial hardship.”
Videos surfaced of angry crowds assaulting ground staff and breaking counters, while hurling abuse and objects at exhausted airline workers.
Social media platforms have been flooded with photos of luggage piling up at airports.
The chaos has coincided with India’s peak wedding season, during which families often plan lavish, days-long celebrations.
“I was supposed to attend my sister’s wedding, but after waiting for hours and repeated cancellations, it feels like everything is falling apart,” Pratik Guha, a businessman, told DW, adding that he left the airport after 13 hours.
“Fellow travelers were breaking down in tears,” Manjeet Arora, a passenger from Delhi, told DW. “This is not just an inconvenience, it is a nightmare.”
The cancellations were caused by a shortage of pilots, which IndiGo admitted was a consequence of its failure to prepare in time for stricter aviation regulations.
The new rules — designed to combat pilot fatigue —increased mandatory weekly rest periods from 36 to 48 hours and slashed permitted night landings from six to two.
Despite nearly two years’ notice since the rules were announced in January 2024, IndiGo’s lean-staffing model and heavy reliance on night flights left it with virtually no buffer when the stricter crew-rest requirements kicked in.
Other airlines, like Air India and Akasa Air, adapted to the same rules without major disruptions.
Jitendra Bhargava, former executive director of Air India, described the crisis as “an ugly chapter in Indian aviation history,” sharply criticizing IndiGo for its handling of the chaos.
“The airline should have truncated the schedule and made it public knowledge once pilot shortages were evident, rather than allowing chaos to unfold,” said Bhargava, adding that IndiGo “should be punished financially.”
“This crisis stems from IndiGo’s own mismanagement rather than from regulatory shortcomings alone,” Bhargava told DW. “The blame is on the airline’s operational planning and communication failures.”
IndiGo’s on-time performance — which stood at a strong 84% in October — plummeted to as low as 35% during the peak of the crisis, underscoring the scale of operational breakdown.
IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers issued a formal apology, acknowledging that December 5 was “the most severely impacted day” in terms of cancellations.
“I, on behalf of IndiGo, would like to extend our sincerest apologies for the major inconvenience this has caused to many of our customers,” said Elbers.
However, the airline faces intensified government scrutiny and public backlash due to the prolonged disruption and service failures.
The Indian government ordered IndiGo to “trace and deliver all baggage separated from passengers due to disruptions within 48 hours.”
India’s aviation watchdog issued a warning notice to Elbers, the IndiGo CEO, demanding explanations within 24 hours on why enforcement action should not be initiated.
As the CEO “you have failed in your duty to ensure timely arrangements for conduct of reliable operations,” read the notice from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
Sandeep Bansal, a former military and current commercial pilot, noted that the air travel chaos was caused by changes of only a few hours in the new regulations, known as the Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL).
“Since IndiGo uses pilots to the maximum capacity, they could not absorb the reduction of a few hours of pilots’ duty time and increased rest time,” Bansal told DW.
“And now IndiGo has asked for a two-month extension for the old FDTL scheme to get its act straight — something which they could not do over the last six months. This has also exposed India’s inadequate preparedness for scaling, urging diversified fleets, pilot training investments, and competition to sustain investor confidence and global ambitions.”
India, with more than 1.4 billion people, is home to the world’s fastest-growing air passenger market and is poised to become the world’s third-largest aviation market after China and the United States, says the International Air Transport Association, an industry body.
Domestic air passenger traffic is expected to double in the next six years, reaching 300 million by the end of 2030, according to the country’s civil aviation ministry.
However, this crisis sends a troubling signal about the country’s readiness for aviation leadership, as it reveals a growth-at-all-costs mentality that prioritizes expansion over operational resilience.
“The country is adding demand faster than it is building the human capital, operational systems, and regulatory culture to support it,” said Umesh Kamath, managing director of Dravidan Aviation Services.
“This appears to be poor planning by IndiGo to maximize holiday profits, combined with questionable regulatory oversight,” Kamath told DW.
“For a market aspiring to rival China and the US, having your largest carrier collapse under basic safety compliance is a red flag.”
Kapil Kaul, CEO and Director of Capa India, a leading aviation research and advisory firm based in New Delhi, told DW that “given the scale of India’s aviation growth … some impact across the industry because of this growth is inevitable,” adding that he expected the aviation industry “to be well prepared to maintain order.”
