Govt asks IndiGo to cut 10% flights until March

Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu on Tuesday summoned crisis-hit IndiGo’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Pieter Elbers and asked him to reduce domestic flights by 10 per cent (over 200 aircraft daily) for the entire winter season to help stabilise operations.

- DEEPAK PATEL

This curtailment is double what the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had ordered on Monday.

The cancellations will apply to high-frequency domestic routes and not to the roughly 600 routes where IndiGo is the sole operator. In October, the DGCA had approved IndiGo’s winter schedule of 2,145 flights per day. The reduction in IndiGo’s flight schedule is unlikely to be fully absorbed by other airlines, such as Air India, Akasa Air and SpiceJet, except on high-demand routes from major metros like Delhi and Mumbai. But with the peak holiday and wedding-travel season under way, fares on these routes could firm up, said executives of rival airlines.

IndiGo said it operated 1,800 flights on Tuesday to all its 138 destinations and plans to operate 1,900 on Wednesday. IndiGo had been operating about 2,300 daily flights — roughly 2,000 domestic and 300 international — until the beginning of December, when it plunged into an operational meltdown after failing to manage its pilot duty rosters under the new Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) rules that came into effect last month.

Naidu said on X that he had "summoned" the IndiGo CEO for an update. "The ministry considers it necessary to curtail the overall Indigo routes, which will help in stabilising the airline's operations and lead to reduced cancellations. A curtailment of 10 per cent has been ordered. While abiding with it, Indigo will continue to cover all its destinations as before," he stated.