On a busy December week Indians rely on planes the way they rely on trains — for schedules, work and family. Instead, thousands of travellers found themselves stranded as IndiGo, the country’s dominant carrier, cancelled more than 2,000 flights after new pilot duty rules came fully into force.
What happened
Problems began to show on December 2 and snowballed: delayed services, sudden cancellations and growing queues at major airports. IndiGo, which operates roughly 2,200 flights a day, announced wide-scale disruptions that left passengers waiting at counters in Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. Some days saw hundreds of cancellations — numbers that briefly cratered the airline’s shares as the aviation regulator asked the CEO to explain the chaos.
The immediate cause was a shortage of available cockpit crews after India implemented strengthened Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL). The rules, rolled out in phases and tightened this year, increase mandatory rest windows and cap certain night flying and landing limits. Put simply: pilots must rest more, and airlines must plan rosters accordingly.
Why it unraveled for IndiGo
Airline executives and pilot unions point to a mix of planning failures and structural choices. Employees and unions say the carrier did not rebuild rosters to match the new rules: hiring slowed, non-poaching understandings with rivals were alleged, and long-standing pay freezes and roster practices left the operator with a thin bench when the FDTL second phase kicked in.
IndiGo itself apologised, calling the situation a product of “misjudgement and planning gaps.” CEO Pieter Elbers has said operations should normalize within days — an initial window of December 10–15 was later narrowed — but the damage to travellers and the airline’s reputation was already done.
Government and regulator moves
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) issued a show-cause notice to IndiGo’s leadership and warned of regulatory action, saying the airline had failed to make timely arrangements to ensure reliable operations. The central government launched a high-level inquiry to assign responsibility for the breakdown.
To ease immediate disruption, the ministry granted targeted exemptions to IndiGo — temporarily loosening requirements on the number of weekly night landings and some flight duty time limits until February 10. That decision enraged pilot unions and the Airline Pilots Association of India, which argued the rules exist to protect passenger safety and should not be suspended for commercial convenience.
Regulators also stepped in to protect consumers: the ministry capped fares on certain routes and offered stranded passengers alternate rail travel where possible. The price cap — for journeys roughly 1,000–1,500km — was set to curb opportunistic fare spikes seen as other carriers adjusted yields to meet demand.
The human and financial toll
Beyond statistics, there are personal stories: travelers who say they received no cancellation alert until reaching the airport, those forced to buy last-minute tickets for exorbitant sums, and families whose plans unraveled. Airports reported long queues and congestion as passengers sought rebookings and refunds.
Markets reacted, too. InterGlobe Aviation (IndiGo’s parent) shares slid as investors fretted about lost revenue and regulatory scrutiny.
How other carriers handled it
Not every airline was caught off guard. Akasa Air, Air India and others managed to keep a larger share of their schedules intact — in part because they recruited more crews and adjusted rostering in advance. Air India, in particular, said it had boosted domestic flight crews, helping it pick up some of the slack in a market where IndiGo controls a majority of seats.
That divergence has revived industry debate about what happens when one carrier controls such a large slice of capacity. With a single operator handling close to 60% of the domestic market on some measures, any operational stumble has outsized consequences for consumers and the system at large.
Bigger picture: labour, planning and market concentration
The crisis highlights three durable tensions in Indian aviation. First, labour rules and safety standards are tightening globally; airlines must invest in crew pipelines and rostering systems rather than treating pilots as interchangeable commodities. Second, short-term cost controls — hiring freezes, non-poaching pacts and pay constraints — can create fragility when regulations change. Third, the concentration of capacity in one carrier raises systemic risk: disruptions scale faster and wider when alternatives are limited.
For travellers, the incident is a reminder that ticket price and seat availability are only part of the reliability equation. For regulators and investors, it’s a test of oversight and corporate governance. And for the airline, it’s a costly lesson in planning and labour strategy.
On the ground, passengers continue to sleep in terminals and cobble together journeys while executives, unions and officials argue about causes and accountability. The coming weeks will show whether changes are operational fixes or the start of deeper shifts in how India’s aviation market balances safety, staffing and scale.