By Ananya Sharma 
New Delhi, December 4: For three long days, IndiGo has been working through a tangle of cancellations that grew faster than anyone inside the terminals could process. By Wednesday, the airline had wiped out 175 more flights, following well over 200 cancellations on Tuesday, as reported by Reuters and Mint. What looked at first like scattered delays quickly turned into a nationwide gridlock that caught thousands of passengers off guard.
At Delhi and Bengaluru, travellers stood in queues that wrapped around pillars. Mumbai and Hyderabad saw similar scenes. Some people curled up on backpacks near charging stations. Others kept refreshing their phones, hoping a last-minute update might arrive. The terminals felt tense, with announcements echoing through the day and barely any clarity about what would fly next.
When New Pilot Rest Rules Hit An Overstretched Network
A major part of the story is the rollout of the new Flight Duty Time Limitations rules that kicked in during November. NDTV has reported that these rules force airlines to give pilots longer breaks and limit consecutive night operations. Safety experts have been asking for such reforms for years.
But IndiGo runs a tight system. The airline’s schedule depends on quick aircraft turnarounds and pilots rotating across multiple short sectors. Once the new rules took effect, those rotations started to jam. A few missing pilots in the morning became a shortage by noon. By evening, entire flight sequences had to be cancelled because the roster simply ran out of legal crew hours.
Pilots have been warning for a while that this crunch was inevitable. According to The New Indian Express, several crew members said the airline had not hired enough pilots to match its fast expansion. Their view is that the current mess is a result of long-term stress, not a sudden shock.
Still, the rule change only pushed an existing system past its limit. It did not create the weakness.
Fog, Technical Checks And Busy Terminals Created A Perfect Backlog
Once the pilot roster slipped, everything else began to tilt. Mint reported that IndiGo also needed to run software updates on a set of its Airbus aircraft this week. Normally, airlines space such updates across quieter days. This time, the timing collided with the winter rush.
Fog in Delhi early this week caused delays that spilled into the next wave of flights. Slots at crowded airports stretched thin. A few delayed departures put pressure on the rest of the schedule. Every missed rotation worsened the next one.
By Tuesday evening, as NDTV confirmed, the airline’s on-time performance had sunk to 35 percent. For an airline that built its brand on predictability, that number felt jarring. It pointed to a system that was no longer recovering between peaks of traffic.
Passengers Faced Long Waits And Patchy Information
The worst frustration for travellers was the lack of clear communication. At Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, The Times of India noted more than 50 cancellations in twenty four hours. Many passengers learned about cancellations only after reaching the airport. Others had boarding passes in hand before receiving text messages telling them to contact support teams.
At Bengaluru, groups formed around help desks where staff struggled to keep up with questions. Some travellers tried calling customer care repeatedly, only to be redirected to online tools that showed outdated schedules.
On certain routes, fares spiked sharply. The Times of India reported that prices climbed to Rs 43,000 for last minute seats, placing passengers in a difficult position with few alternatives.
Regulators Step In As IndiGo Faces Tough Questions
The wave of cancellations finally pushed the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to seek answers directly from IndiGo’s senior leadership. According to reports in The Times of India, officials want a detailed account of why the airline did not prepare better for the new duty time rules and why aircraft maintenance lined up with the busiest part of the season.
There is also concern about whether the disruption will spread beyond IndiGo. All airlines must adjust to the new pilot rest rules. All of them are working through winter congestion. The regulator is trying to prevent a wider breakdown across the domestic aviation network.
Still, the size of IndiGo’s failure raises questions that only the airline can address.
A Model Built On Efficiency Now Showing Strain
For years, IndiGo’s strategy has been simple. Keep the fleet standardized. Keep the utilization high. Keep the schedule predictable. That approach helped the airline dominate domestic traffic.
But efficiency works only when every part of the system holds steady. This week, several parts shifted at once. Without spare pilots and without extra gaps built into the winter schedule, the network could not absorb shocks.
In November, as Business Standard reported, the airline had already cancelled more than 1,200 flights, most of them linked to crew shortages. The December collapse did not arrive out of nowhere. It was a continuation of pressure that had been building for weeks.
What IndiGo Must Fix To Regain Stability
IndiGo has told employees that it is making measured reductions in the schedule to bring operations back under control. This usually means cancelling some flights in advance to avoid last-minute chaos. It is a necessary step, even if unpopular.
Longer term, the airline may have to expand its crew strength, widen rest buffers and rethink how it handles winter congestion. It also has to decide how to space out software updates and maintenance checks so that these do not overlap with peak travel periods.
Passengers, though, will judge the airline by what happens next. They want clearer messages, fewer last-minute surprises and a sense that the airline is steadying itself. This week delivered the opposite.
For now, the terminals remain crowded, schedules remain fragile, and IndiGo is working to restore trust flight by flight.
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- Ananya Sharmahttps://hindustanherald.in/author/ananya/
- Ananya Sharmahttps://hindustanherald.in/author/ananya/
- Ananya Sharmahttps://hindustanherald.in/author/ananya/
- Ananya Sharmahttps://hindustanherald.in/author/ananya/
