HOW NEW RULES EXPOSED INDIGO’S FLAWS

ROSTER RUPTURE | The revised Flight Duty Time Limitations rules immediately rendered a large portion of its pre-planned roster illegal, forcing pilots into compulsory rest periods and eliminating the small crew buffer the airline typically maintained

- Dhairya Gajara

The scene at major Indian airports this week was one of escalating chaos — hundreds of flights cancelled, on-time performance plummeting to single digits and thousands of frustrated passengers stranded in lines that stretched across terminals. The carrier at the center of this storm was IndiGo, India’s largest airline, whose massive operational disruption was not triggered by a single catastrophic event, but rather a perfect storm of new regulatory mandates colliding with years of lean, high-utilisation planning.

The crisis, which saw the airline cancel over 1,000 flights in a single day, highest ever cancellation recorded by any airline, and forced the regulator to intervene, stems primarily from a drastic mismatch between IndiGos operational footprint and its available crew strength under newly enforced safety rules.