New Delhi: India’s aviation network has been plunged into disruption, with nearly half of all domestic flights canceled over the past three days – mostly on IndiGo – stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers and forcing the regulator to blink and relax newly tightened pilot fatigue norms. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Friday gave IndiGo until February 10 to meet limits on consecutive night operations, a pause the government says is necessary to restore stability, even as pilots and safety experts warn the move undermines hard-won protections against fatigue.
The directorate proposed to introduce two rules for all airlines. The first, which went into effect July 1, required airlines to give pilots up to 48 hours of weekly rest, down from 36 hours, and also prohibited airlines from replacing pilots’ leave — casual, sick or earned — with weekly rest. This rule has been revoked.
The second rule, which came into effect on November 1 and restricted pilots to flying twice consecutively between midnight and 6 a.m., will apply to all airlines except InterGlobe Aviation’s IndiGo, India’s largest carrier by fleet size and service and market share, which is gaining additional time.
The implementation of this rule meant that carriers would have to hire more pilots, as one pilot could only fly an aircraft at night for two consecutive nights, and the third would have to rest.
On Friday, the third day in a row that passengers were inconvenienced, the civil aviation ministry said it had set up a four-member panel to look into the breakdown of services on IndiGo. The panel is expected to submit its findings within 15 days, the aviation authority said in a statement.
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“The DGCA has granted a one-time exemption from the specific requirements of FDTL (Flight Duty Time Limitation) norms to M/s Indigo till February 10, 2026,” the civil aviation authority said in a press release. “This exemption has been granted solely to facilitate operational stabilization and is in no way a dilution of safety requirements. During this period, the DGCA would review every fortnight the measures taken by M/s Indigo to address the situation, including hiring of adequate crew to ensure compliance with the FDTL.”
IndiGo said it had to cancel more than 1,000, or about half, of its planned 2,200 domestic flights because the airline did not plan to have enough pilots to meet the new norms. IndiGo has already canceled more than 1,800 flights between December 1 and 4.
Passengers are expected to face hardship in the coming week as IndiGo, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of the country’s 3,785 daily flights, said it would take 5-10 days to return to normalcy.
In a brief video address, IndiGo Chief Executive Officer Pieter Elbers said IndiGo expects the number of cancellations on Saturday to be “below 1,000” and that the “FDTL relief is a big help”. The airline expects normalcy to return between December 10 and 15, he said.
Runoff impact
IndiGo planes parked in the bays had a cascading effect on other airlines, including Air India and Akasa. Despite hiring enough pilots in anticipation of the proposed rules, which have been more than two years in the making, those airlines have also seen delays and cancellations.
Friday was a nightmare for passengers, with many stranded at airports and waiting endlessly after airlines canceled flights. As the number of cancellations spiked, the aviation authority initially tried a calibrated approach to manage the disruption. In the afternoon, it first relaxed weekly leave norms, allowing airlines to adjust weekly rest periods for pilots and giving IndiGo a special relaxation. By evening, the ministry announced that these rules would be lifted for Indigo.
The regulator’s change of stance prompted many industry experts and pilots to voice their anxieties.
“The rollback for even one airline reflects very poorly on India’s civil aviation regulator. It simply buckled under the pressure of this single carrier,” said Mark D. Martin, CEO of Martin Consulting and an aviation security expert.
“This will push Indian aviation back,” said Sanjay Lazar, CEO of Avialaz Consulting. “Imagine the US Secretary of Transportation ever overturning the FAA directive on safety-based work hours (other than in case of war). Unthinkable. India is the fastest growing aviation market in the world and the third largest without a stable FDTL on par with global safety and fatigue management standards.”
Read also | What really went crazy at IndiGo?
None of the airlines, including IndiGo, Air India, Akasa and SpiceJet, responded to Mint’s queries about the development.
IndiGo has mainly linked these cancellations to revised crew rostering norms. Among other things, the revised standards required 48 hours of weekly rest for pilots, defined night duty as midnight to 6 a.m., and limited night landings to two. Airlines now follow the older rules, which include, among other things, 36 hours of weekly rest for pilots, night duty defined as midnight to 5am.
Between December 1 and 5, InterGlobe’s share price fell 7.3%, while the benchmark Nifty gained 0.4% during the period.
In a strong letter, the Airline Pilots Association of India (Alpa) objected to the relief granted by the regulator, pointing out that the relief was airline-specific and against the interest of pilots. He calls such precedent “dangerous” and “indefensible”.
What’s-gone-probe
According to Gagan Dixit, senior vice-president, oil and gas and aviation at Elara Securities, the core issue remains IndiGo’s high-usage night-time model, which is highly sensitive to stricter fatigue norms and limited cockpit buffers, and remains unresolved.
“The high-level inquiry into ‘what went wrong at IndiGo’ adds management overhang even as near-term operational risk recedes,” Dixit said.
Although the regulator has repeatedly warned airlines to prepare for the new norms, IndiGo has not properly planned its manpower, training or rosters. As a result, the airline faced a severe pilot shortage, causing 170-200 daily cancellations in late November, more than any other carrier. The commission will review what went wrong, check whether IndiGo is following the rules, fix the liability and evaluate the steps the airline is now taking to resume normal operations.
Passenger explosion
Amid growing public anger on social media, political leaders — including opposition leader Rahul Gandhi — also got involved. In a post on X on Friday afternoon, Gandhi said: “The indigo fiasco is the cost of this government monopoly model. Again, it is ordinary Indians who are paying the price – in delays, cancellations and fair competition in every sector they deserve fair competition.”
Delhi-Mumbai flight which normally stands around ₹6,000-8,000, shot up to as much as ₹24,774 on MakeMyTrip. During the day, prices for the Mumbai-Delhi flight hit ₹46,000.
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Passengers expressed their frustration at airports in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.
The passenger, requesting anonymity, said he arrived at the Bengaluru airport at 6 am on Friday and took a flight to Kolkata at 8.15 am. To his surprise, the boarding pass didn’t even have a gate number. After nine hours and repeated requests for updates, he was told at around 2pm that the flight had been cancelled. It took another three hours to pick up his luggage, for which he had to fill out a form. The passenger had originally reserved a ticket for approx ₹9000. The same for the next day is now standing around ₹23,040.
Tarun Kumar, a 32-year-old software engineer, booked a flight from Bengaluru to Visakhapatnam at 4:10 pm for three people and a return flight on Monday, total ₹29,000. His flight was canceled today and according to MakeMyTrip, a one-way ticket on the same route now costs Rs 17,580 per person.
