NEW DELHI: Lakhs of passengers have been hit by massive flight delays and cancellations at India’s largest airline, IndiGo, since Tuesday, primarily due to a pilot shortage.On Wednesday, over 200 flights were cancelled, after nearly over 100 cancellations daily for the past 4-5 days. Some of Wednesday’s delays were up to 10 hours. DGCA has asked the airline “to explain the unprecedented disruptions”. Govt data showed on Tuesday (Dec 2) its on-time performance, at 35%, was the lowest among all scheduled airlines in India.IndiGo flight cuts send air fares soaringFlying a million passengers every three days, the impact in terms of number of flyers hit is in lakhs.The volume of public inconvenience and outcry on social media led the aviation authorities to act. Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has called the airline’s senior management Thursday “to explain the unprecedented disruptions” and also present a plan on how they hope to get back on track in the ongoing peak travel season when India has been witnessing over five lakh daily domestic passengers. “DGCA is investigating the situation and evaluating measures along with the airline to reduce cancellations and delays in order to minimise inconvenience being caused to passengers,” an official said.
IndiGo announced Wednesday evening it had “initiated calibrated adjustments”, or flight cuts. “These measures will remain in place for the next 48 hours and will allow us to normalise our operations and progressively recover our punctuality across the network,” the airline said, acknowledging its “operations have been significantly disrupted across the network for the past two days”.Almost 62% of the 1,232 flights IndiGo cancelled in Nov were due to “crew constraints”. DGCA had brought into effect more humane crew flight duty norms from Nov 1 following serious complaints of fatigue by cockpit crew of Indian carriers. While this increased pilot requirement, the 62% cancellation data (for Nov) shows IndiGo is now struggling on that front. IndiGo’s OTP crashed from 84.1% in Oct, 2025 to 67.7% last month. “The date for revised FDTL norms’ implementation was known. The preparation for the same was definitely not in place,” said industry sources.IndiGo’s flight cuts, and uncertainty over OTP has sent fares soaring. An economy class one-way (nonstop) Delhi-Bengaluru ticket for Friday and Saturday (Dec 5 & 6) was in the range of Rs 11,000 to Rs 43,145. Similarly, Mumbai-Kolkata was in the range of Rs 8,000 to Rs 19,000.About the delays, IndiGo blamed “a multitude of unforeseen operational challenges, including minor technology glitches, schedule changes linked to the winter season, adverse weather conditions, increased congestion in the aviation system, and the implementation of updated crew rostering rules (flight duty time limitations)”, which, it said, had a negative compounding impact on operations in a way that was not feasible to be anticipated”.IndiGo’s OTP has taken a hit for the past few weeks but things now seem to have hit the roof. Only 35% IndiGo flights (the airline operates over 2,200 daily) operated on time Tuesday (Dec 2). And Wednesday multiple airports, including Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, reported almost 200 flight cancellations by the afternoon.Harried officials across airports said Wednesday IndiGo delays and cancellations were causing major issues.
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