'IndiGo is fooling the country and the government has succumbed to it.'
Chaos at airports, serpentine queues, and thousands of passengers stranded for days -- India's largest airline IndiGo is in the middle of its worst operational meltdown.
Flights have been delayed, cancelled, or abruptly rescheduled, throwing holiday plans, business trips and medical travel into disarray.
What has shocked the country even more is this: IndiGo, the airline that reported a record profit of over ₹8,000 crore (Rs 80 billion) in March 2024, is now struggling to keep its network functioning.
With aircraft parked on the tarmac, crew stuck in the wrong bases, and a planning system that appears to have collapsed from within, one question is echoing across the aviation sector: How did a profit-making market leader with 67 percent domestic share land in such a fiasco? What exactly went wrong?
For passengers, the experience has been nothing short of a nightmare -- hours spent waiting for updates that never come, last-minute cancellations, and refunds that remain uncertain given the scale of the disruption.
The chaos is so widespread that days later, operations are yet to stabilise, raising concerns about whether the airline underestimated the crisis or simply failed to plan for it.
To understand more about the IndiGo crisis, Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff spoke to Captain C S Randhawa, president, Federation of Indian Pilots, on what went wrong with India's numero uno airline.
Why do you think IndiGo is unable to sort out the mess yet?
From day one I have been telling the government and everyone in the media that IndiGo started this bogey that because of weather condition, Air Traffic Control (ATC) congestion, Flight Duty Time Limit (FDTL) and CR (crew rostering), their operations are affected. I have been negating them point by point.
There is no bad weather condition for IndiGo flights not to fly in any part of the country as winter has not set in yet.
ATC congestion is also not true because it is not there.
As far as FDTL and CR is concerned, IndiGo is trying to circumvent these by getting some exemptions.
Fourth point is that they are saying there is a shortage of captains, but then, shortage of 65 captains cannot tantamount to cancellation of 5,000 flights.
Now see the fun, the aircraft are parked on the ground, the crew is available but the flights are not operating.
So what was the problem?
There was a software issue in IndiGo which the CEO had admitted in a press statement.
The software of network planning and integration for optimisation of the crew resources into the planning system was undergoing a change and it was pre-planned.
So, why has the government given a waiver to IndiGo and compromised flight safety when other airlines are adhering to norms?
IndiGo has got the manpower and by giving a waiver to IndiGo, the government has set a wrong precedent.
IndiGo is blackmailing the government because they hold 67 percent share of domestic air traffic.
So is pilot shortage the real problem with IndiGo or did a software issue lead to the chaos?
Some 65 captains and 80-odd first officers were short. But then this figure will tantamount to a delay of, say, 15 to 20-odd flights.
And here, in this scenario, IndiGo increased the winter schedule by 150 flights per day.
When the aircraft utilisation has to increase, they have got a different basis for pilots where they have to integrate the crew rostering system into the network planning and that was pre-planned, that they will do during these days.
IndiGo was aware, so where is the question of giving a waiver of CR to the airline?
This is what is bad from IndiGo, that they do not want to take inputs from experts in the aviation industry like us. They want to jump to conclusions and take the help of DGCA which is jumping to help the airlines.
Now they have formed a high level committee to investigate the matter, when this nationwide chaos is happening in front of our eyes.
The high level committee should have comprised some senior judge of the high court or Supreme Court of India or a very senior bureaucrat. Not a DGCA person whom you call as high level when one of them in this high level committee has given 150 extra flying slots to IndiGo airlines without checking crew availability. This is the truth.
Passengers are still suffering.
The aircraft are still on the ground. They have crew available but IndiGo's rostering is unable to pick up. Some crew is sitting in Pune and he is supposed to operate a flight from Kolkata. Now, IndiGo is telling that crew go and operate the flight from Kolkata without knowing that the crew is based in Pune.
Just see the mess IndiGo has created.
How could IndiGo have not known about the mess?
They knew when they were carrying out integration and software update. They knew very well when they are going to run it and this is what their CEO said.
IndiGo says it will normalise operations by February. Do you think that is achievable?
We are talking about 5,000 flights. Now are we considering that all those passengers on the 5,000 flights will take refunds? There will be a lot of passengers who will do re-booking.
Now if you take 200 passengers per flight and multiply it by 5,000, it is 10 lakh (1 million) passengers. Till yesterday 10 lakh IndiGo passengers were affected. Suppose 20 percent of these 10 lakh passengers are re-booking, that means 200,000 passengers.
I don't think they will be able to adjust till February 2026. I am considering that one-fifth of passengers will re-book tickets.
Had the Delhi high court not passed the order on pilots flying time last year, would this crisis have happened?
The Delhi high court intervened because IndiGo was not allowing DGCA to implement the CR which is a scientific requirement of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
We have been fighting for the last six years to give relief to the pilots. Ultimately, we requested the high court to intervene and we are grateful to the honourable high court that they gave a deadline and got the implementation done after taking consultations from all the airlines. After which it was done in two phases.
What were these two phases?
In phase one, 15 clauses were changed on July 1, 2025, after which not a single cancellation of flights was reported by IndiGo. There was no delay in flights too.
The second phase, in which seven clauses were implemented on November 1, and in spite of that there was not much cancellation.
(The problem arose when) they asked for 150 extra flights a day and on that basis there was cancellation.
So IndiGo is fooling the country and the government has succumbed to it.
And what action has been taken against IndiGo by the Government of India? Only a show cause notice.
I pity the passengers of IndiGo who have gone through this horrific ordeal with no government support.
How come other airlines did not report any cancellation?
Because you've got to understand that more than two years were given to all airlines to sort out their problems. So shouldn't IndiGo be penalised?
IndiGo has become too big. IndiGo needs to break up into three or four airlines and the government must do it.
Like in the USA where they don't allow a monopoly?
Yes, and the government has to break the monopoly of IndiGo.
Air India too needs to be broken up into two companies.
You've got to stop this monopoly. If you don't do it now the citizens of India will pay a very heavy penalty for it.
in future these airlines will take passengers for granted every day.
Last April it was Air India because they got new software system and this year it is IndiGo.
What is the long term reform needed for the airline industry?
I had suggested to the minister (of civil aviation) that they have to break this duopoly of airlines.
You've got to make certification friendly. You've got to give taxation rebates. Industry has to feel comfortable. You've got to see aviation fuel prices are reduced and government subsidies need to be given.
The government needs to encourage the aviation sector and only then will you get more airlines.
But right now as we say in Hindi, passengers majboori mein aagaye hain.
Abhi toh kuch nahi ho sakta. At present the only answer is that as it stabilises we are telling the government to withdraw the permission given to IndiGo to fly additional 150 flights a day.
It is not a joke. Why have they not withdrawn it if there is a pilot shortage? A simple statistic says by not recruiting those many pilots IndiGo has saved around Rs 1,200 crores in a year.
You've got to see the bigger game. An airline that is making a profit of Rs 8,172 crore (as of March 2024) is doing all these things.
IndiGo needs to be criminally prosecuted.