IndiGo Struggles to Explain Mass Cancellations to DGCA

IndiGo Airlines might have received a temporary reprieve from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) over regulations that led to massive cancellations of flights, but its troubles are far from over. Following the DGCA giving a deadline for a show cause, the airline's response on Monday evening was that it still had not been able to pinpoint what had gone wrong and that many factors had compounded together. Industry experts believe that it was the airline dragging its feet on implementing the new regulations that gave pilots more resting hours and curtailed their number of night flights that created the crisis.

Hundreds of flights were still being cancelled. The airline put up a social media post on December 8 stating that normalcy was on its way and the cancellations had been pre-notified. More than 1,800 flights were operational as against 1,650 the previous day and there was a 90 percent on-time performance. A Crisis Management Group that has been set up is meeting daily to get the situation back to normal.

However, it will eventually have to account for throwing the entire aviation sector into a tailspin. The regulations have only been relaxed till February 10, 2026 and to meet them, IndiGo will need to hire a large number of extra pilots which won't be easy in the time the government has given it. The airline may also face punishment. On Monday, the civil aviation minister told Parliament that not only would strict action be taken but it would set an example for the future. He also hinted that even on December 1 when IndiGo met with ministry officials over the new regulations, the airline had not informed them about its state of unpreparedness. The government, said the minister, wants to encourage more airlines to start up for competition in the sector.