India’s aviation crisis is all about too big to tame

INDIA'S LATEST AVIATION fiasco—about 3,000 flights cancelled since last week— has exposed the ill effects of leaving two-thirds of a fast-growing market in the hands of a single player and allowing it to become not just too big to fail, but also too big to tame.

- ANDY MUKHERJEE Bloomberg

InterGlobe Aviation, which operates IndiGo, has told the regulator that the mass cancellations were a result of multiple factors, including implementation of stricter regulations on night flying and weekly rest for pilots. Combined with technical glitches and the switch to a winter schedule, the mandate resulted in an acute shortage of crew. With more than half a million reservations abruptly dishonoured, and stranded passengers pouring their anger at helpless counter staff, the authorities had to roll back the rules around pilot fatigue.

The Airline Pilots Association of India has rightly termed the policy U-turn as a “dangerous precedent’—after all, management had known the new requirements since early last year. However, authorities had no choice. After they woke up to the distressed scenes at overcrowded airports, the immediate priority was to restore order by returning the planes back to the skies.