Last week’s aviation debacle – which has continued this week but has begun to subside – may have been driven by the country’s flagship airline IndiGo, but it was fueled by a system designed to fail. This has highlighted several shortcomings that need to be addressed if India is to achieve the goal of Vikas Bharat (Developed India).
Indian travelers have had to pay a heavy price – some resorting to storming counters in airports and others in tears – thanks to the monopoly (the market leader, IndiGo has about 60% share, and Air India and its partners have about 25%), that is the aviation market. All the dangers of monopoly came to the fore when market leader IndiGo miscalculated (or deliberately chose to miscalculate as is being openly alleged by its own employees) its crew requirements after the new rest and duty guidelines came into effect on November 1 following court intervention.
This caused roster breaks for the month of November, causing numerous delays and a total of 1,200 flight cancellations during the month. Matters reached a crescendo on Friday, 5 December, when a total of 1,500 out of 2,200 daily flights were cancelled. Scenes of passenger frustration, huge crowds, utter chaos at airports and even protests condemning the airline were shown on screen. As passengers tried to find alternatives, fares across all airlines started skyrocketing.
The question that should be asked is whether this situation could have been avoided. The obvious answer is, yes; This is the airline’s self-inflicted crisis, fueled by a regulatory system that is fundamentally broken.
In October-November 2023 – after coming under pressure following several deaths and incidents involving fatigued crew – airline safety regulator DGCA came out with a new set of duty hours guidelines and new CARs (civil aviation requirements). The country’s pilot community was completely confident that these would not be implemented by the regulator as it would put additional financial burden on the airlines – and that is exactly what happened. CAR was kept in abeyance and things changed (with a gap) only after the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) took up the matter in court in 2024.
Allowing pilots the kind of rest that was being proposed would mean making additional appointments on a large scale. Pilots, crew and even the airline management said that till then, the DGCA had turned a blind eye to the deteriorating working conditions for pilots and crew and had allowed airline operators to push them to their limits. The allegation was that the DGCA was more sensitive to “the commercial considerations of the airlines than to the safety of passengers”. After several court hearings and delays, it was finally agreed that implementation would take place in two phases: in July this year, and again in November 1.
It is clear that IndiGo has failed to recruit and calibrate its rosters for the last few years despite being fully aware of and understanding the issue, possibly on the assumption that it would prevail and manage to further delay the implementation. The entire episode that played out last week is perhaps the biggest vindication of the allegation that India has a failed regulatory system that is working more in the interests and at the behest of the airlines rather than ensuring safety. The regulator went ahead with the backdown (IndiGo was given the relief it had asked for).
The subsidiary question is also why the DGCA approved the airline’s additional flights for its winter schedule if it was aware of the fact that the airline did not have the requisite crew, bearing in mind that both the airline and the regulator were fully aware of the need for increased crew during the November implementation and thereafter.
The lessons from the above are clear: regulators can do more harm than good unless they are completely autonomous from government control and influence, have teeth to enforce regulation and are staffed by people who have true expertise in the field. The functioning of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers – without questioning their excellent administrative abilities – in trying to trace the cause of the AI 171 crash of magnitude or last week’s failure needs to be actively discouraged.
As the crisis escalated, another alarming difference became apparent. Helpless passengers who tried to book tickets on other airlines found that prices were skyrocketing and those who sought troubleshooting from IndiGo (refunds, alternative flights, hotels to stay, lost luggage or even basic information) had nowhere to go. This highlights the need for a grievance redressal body independent of the DGCA in its current form. With India soon poised to become the world’s third largest aviation market, having to turn to the safety regulator for every small and big matter is uneconomical to say the least. This creates an even greater risk as the body in charge of security constantly deviates from its core mandate.
To reiterate, India urgently needs an ombudsman or regulatory authority that deals solely with consumer complaints and non-safety matters, which are increasing at a faster pace than the capacity addition by airlines. If this latest failure doesn’t convince policymakers of this necessity, nothing will.
But the events of the past week also demand that IndiGo’s operations be brought under greater scrutiny. Last week’s crisis was perhaps the biggest in the airline’s 19-year-old history, but it’s fair to say it’s been a while coming. There is a feeling among many airline industry watchers that the essence of what IndiGo represented in the past as a brand, business and company has been lost in this nearly two decade journey. The Indigo of 2005-06 is indistinguishable from the Indigo of 2024-25. While this can be attributed to evolution to some extent, this journey has seen a decline in some of the key values and metrics that the airline stood for in the early days.
Leaving aside this latest fiasco (which would instantly catapult it to the top of today’s unpopularity charts), the airline, which has its own set of staunch loyalists, has, over the years, managed to garner a surplus of “thumbs down” from growing sections of the flying public. Why this should be so deserves close examination by its management.
Many may dismiss this “hate” towards IndiGo as an expression of public anger towards other systemic failures, which is then redirected towards the airline they fly most frequently, but the now defunct Jet Airways never found itself in this dilemma. Jet loyalists loved the airline and many employees liked its founder Naresh Goyal, no matter his failures.
On social media, aviation analysts (including many who have worked in senior positions at airlines) have already commented on IndiGo founder Rahul Bhatia’s distant and isolated working style and asked whether the episode would have played out the same way had co-founder Rakesh Gangwal – known for his deep understanding and love of aviation – been still on board and involved in the management of the carrier.
Perhaps even more worrying to the airline’s management and board is that if the flying public hates it, its own pilots and employees hate it too. Two letters from staff, which were widely circulated at the time of the crisis, should leave no doubt as to how low relations have reached between the crew and ground staff on the one hand, and management on the other. The fact that the airline needs to resort to every trick in the book to retain its commanders, who are constantly leaving for West Asian Airlines and others, should give its board and management something to do. Had its pilots and commanders loved their airline as much as Jet, the crisis might have been much milder than it was.
And finally, several people (including employees in a letter) have raised the aspect of the “foreign element” which has affected the airline, although, to be fair, it is also a concern for its nearest rival Air India. Senior management and old loyalists (primarily Indians) are beginning to resent what they see as a colonial takeover of foreigners brought in by IndiGo after its Dutch CEO, many of whom are now calling the shots.
The lessons for the airline are clear: rather than trying to rig the system (which any large company has the power to do) and finding its way out externally, it may be time to inspect all the factors and address those that can be fixed internally. All is not well at Indigo and has not been so for the last few years. The profit obtained from taking advantage of the monopoly in which it finds itself is not the only criterion of success.
As we head into the new year, the AI crash in June and the subsequent collapse of the entire building will impact the progress made by India’s aviation in the year 2025. This is a disappointing start to 2026.
But the mandarins at the Civil Aviation Ministry probably need this coffee-smelling moment.
Anjuli Bhargava writes about governance, infrastructure and social sector. Views expressed are personal
