Flighty governance

IndiGo fiasco reflects systemic failures

- 

The crisis at IndiGo represents the kind of perfect storm that has been the cause of major crises in the corporate sector — from Kingfisher Airlines to Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services.

It involves collective failure at multiple levels — executive management, board, as well as the sector regulator — and highlights endemic weaknesses in Indian corporate governance. The airline, which operated over 2,300 flights per day to 140 destinations at its peak, built its formidable lead and delivered profitability in an industry riddled with burnouts, principally on account of its acute attention to on-time performance and costs. Together with other scheduled operators, the airline had over a year to align its pilot recruitment programme to the upgraded flight duty time limitation (FDTL) rules, notified by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in January last year.