Too little for so much disruption

Penalties ought to be severe to make reckless cost- cutting genuinely uneconomical. DGCA ignored this point while imposing penalties on IndiGo

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India’s aviation regulator imposed an unprecedented 222.2 crore penalty on IndiGo on Saturday for the airline’s operational collapse that stranded over 300,000 passengers last month.

In three days, 2,507 flights were cancelled and 1,852 delayed —the most acute crisis in the country’s aviation sector. The unparalleled crisis deserved unforeseen penalties. But the question is not whether the penalty is unprecedented, but whether it is adequate —and the answer is no.