Inside IndiGo's FDTL crisis

When IndiGo's operations collapsed in December 2025, leaving thousands stranded and grounding large parts of the nation's air travel grid, it seemed at first like a sudden crisis.

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The DGCA had tightened Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL), IndiGo's roster system buckled, and the shockwaves rippled across the country. But like many aviation failures, this one was long in the making. The meltdown wasn't only about tighter rest rules; it was an indictment of India's reliance on a single dominant airline, a fragile labour model, and regulatory transitions implemented without enough anticipation of real-world consequences.

On the surface, the story reads like a familiar tale of regulation and compliance. India's aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), updated Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) to tighten crew rest and night-duty rules, and a large carrier suddenly found itself unable to operate as before. But the IndiGo crisis of December 2025 is more than a clash of rules and roster sheets. It is a revealing stress test of network design, labour planning, regulatory timing, and systemic concentration in a market where one carrier carries roughly two-thirds of domestic traffic. The magnitude of disruption, comprising thousands of flight cancellations, tens of thousands of stranded passengers, large financial losses and political pressure, shows how a well-intentioned safety reform can cascade into national transport paralysis when business models, operational buffers and regulatory roll-out are misaligned.