For the third time since India opened its skies to private airlines, a carrier has discovered that the fastest way to bend the State is not through policy lobbying—but by holding passengers hostage. Planes are grounded; chaos is unleashed; and the government, fearful of systemic collapse, blinks first.
Once again, the aviation regulator and the Union government have caved in. We have seen this script before.
Jet Airways did the same dance in 2018–19: tears, employee marches, ‘national asset’ rhetoric and, finally, a quiet burial leaving banks and passengers holding the bag. Go First grounded itself overnight in 2023 citing ‘engine issues’ while lessors fought for their aircraft.
In June 2025, the Air India crash triggered the grounding of a large number of aircraft over safety concerns and highlighted the dangers of India’s flawed aviation policy. But nothing changed.
This time, however, the hostage-taker is different. InterGlobe Aviation’s IndiGo does not merely threaten disruption—it is the system. With nearly two-thirds of India’s domestic market, IndiGo’s dominance has erased all shock absorbers. When Kingfisher collapsed, the market adjusted. When Jet died, IndiGo absorbed its slots. Today, when IndiGo stumbled, Indian aviation seized up. The airline has to learn that it made a horrific miscalculation and there will be serious consequences.
The crisis hit at the worst possible moment—peak wedding season, high tourism flows, major entertainment events and a sensitive State visit. The scale of disruption was without precedent. And yet, the official response was not enforcement—it was surrender.
Directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) responded with a temporary suspension of the implementation of safety regulations for IndiGo alone.
The trigger was India’s long-delayed flight duty time limitation (FDTL) rules—basic safety regulations that cap night flying hours and mandate 48-hour weekly rest for pilots. These norms were proposed in 2019 after fatigue-related risks were flagged following the Mangalore and Kozhikode disasters. After repeated airline lobbying and several deferments, DGCA finally set a non-negotiable deadline of 1 November 2025.
This was announced 18 months ago. Every other airline—Air India, Akasa Air and Spice Jet -- complied by recruiting additional pilots and rostering accordingly. Only IndiGo did not.
Despite having the largest fleet, the deepest cash reserves and the highest market share, IndiGo neither hired at scale nor trimmed capacity. Internal communications now suggest that senior management had flagged pilot shortages as early as in March 2025. The failure to comply was not an accident; it was a calculated gamble that the government would not dare enforce safety rules against a near-monopolist.
The chronology of the meltdown is now indisputable and reveals IndiGo’s machinations through stock exchange filings.
3 December: IndiGo blamed disruptions on ‘minor technology glitches’ and ‘winter fog’ with a passing reference to the implementation of updated crew rostering rules (FDTL) compounding issues.
4 December: Asked by the National Stock Exchange (NSE) to clarify media reports of a DGCA probe, the company states it is ‘not aware of any probe’.
5 December: Over 1,000 cancellations in a single day — the highest in Indian aviation history. Here again, further clarifications were only in response NSE demanding clarifications.
6 December: DGCA issues a 24-hour show-cause notice to IndiGo’s chief executive officer (CEO), forms a four-member committee (standard delay tactic) and then quietly grants the exemption up to 10 February 2026.
7 December: The board, silent for five full days, suddenly claims that directors had been meeting regularly from ‘Day One’ and had formed a crisis management group including independent directors. There is still no evidence of a formally, emergency board meeting, whose deliberations and decisions would be documented, recorded and released to investors under the listing regulations of stock exchanges.
This sequence reveals three systemic failures.
Regulatory Capture: It is hard to believe that DGCA and the ministry of civil aviation were clueless that IndiGo had made no preparations to comply. Safety regulations are not discretionary; they are statutory instruments under the Aircraft Rules, 1937. Granting a six-month waiver to one operator,, while every other airline complies creates an unlevel playing field and directly endangers flight safety. Pilot unions have already termed the exemption ‘a recipe for disaster’.
DGCA chose to prioritise short-term operational stability over long-term safety credibility. The question is: Will it act decisively once things stabilise? The regulator’s own data showed IndiGo operating with the lowest pilot-to-aircraft ratio among major carriers for 18 months. The inaction during the build-up, followed by the panicked waiver, points to a textbook case of regulatory forbearance morphing into regulatory capture. Now, employee-whistle-blowers are putting out information about how DGCA looked away when IndiGo throttled competition and ensure its dominance.
Dangers of Duopoly: India’s civil aviation policy is largely to blame for a perverse structure where we build hundreds of unused airports but cannot fix the structural issues that make the domestic aviation unviable.
High taxes on air turbine fuel (ATF) account for 40%-45% of operating costs are worsened by a weakening rupee. Airport charges are among the highest in the world, while the regulator, DGCA, itself is chronically understaffed. Every aviation crisis highlights these fault line but the policy paralysis prevails.
In June 2025, when the Ahmedabad crash grounded dozens of aircraft, I wrote about how it exposed structural flaws in
Indian aviation.
Governance Issues: InterGlobe Aviation’s board reads like a governance hall of fame: chairman Vikram Singh Mehta, former civil servant Amitabh Kant, former Delta president Gregg Saretsky, ex-FAA (federal aviation administration of USA) administrator Mike Whitaker, and M Damodaran, the former SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India) chairman and now a governance evangelist. Yet, for five critical days, while a crisis unfolded, there wasn't a peep from the board, until a social media outcry led to the announcement of a crisis management committee.
The human cost of this triple failure — regulatory, policy and governance — has been staggering. Over 300,000 passengers were directly affected, lakhs more indirectly. No statutory compensation framework exists. The ₹5,000–₹10,000 ‘goodwill gesture’ is discretionary and taxable. Refunds are still being fought over.
Mohan Murti’s observations in an X post make some key points. He says, Emirates isn’t an airline – it is Dubai’s foreign policy, a national soft power. Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi built aviation hubs as national economic engines, not real-estate jackpots. Similarly, Singapore Airlines is among the best in the world, because the country treats it as a part of national building, not a cow to be milked dry for ATF taxes.
In contrast, India hobbles our carriers with populist schemes such as UDAN – Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik — a fanciful scheme that capped fares on certain routes to unprofitable levels. It was perhaps an excuse to build hundreds of airports that are never used. UDAN has failed miserably. Parliament was told that, of the 619 UDAN routes that were launched, only 323 remain active, while 114 were discontinued within three years. This is in addition to high costs and taxes.
India now stands at a dangerous inflection point. A private airline has demonstrated that it can create a crisis and extract a regulatory surrender, even on safety issues. Unless the response is swift, structural and exemplary, the message to infrastructure monopolists is: Grow big enough and the law will bend.
This episode is no longer about one airline. It is about the credibility of India’s ambition to be considered an economic superpower. Unless the government fixes policy flaws and prioritises safety regulations, real turbulence lies ahead for anyone who plans travelling by air.
This policy of airlines just refunding the ticket buyer their money with no penalties is one of the root causes of this pandemic of flight cancellations. Let every flight cancellation hit their pocket and the problem will solve itself.