The Union Government has squarely attributed the widespread flight cancellations and delays plaguing IndiGo over the past eight days to the airline’s “internal rostering disruptions.” In a stern statement in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, Union Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu asserted that while operations are stabilising, the carrier will be held accountable for the crisis that has caused significant passenger hardship.
Minister Naidu informed the House that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has issued show cause notices to the airline's senior leadership and initiated a detailed enforcement investigation.
“I would like to inform this august House that the disruption caused by IndiGo's recent operational failures is now rapidly stabilising. Accountability will be ensured,” Naidu stated. “Depending on the outcome, strict and appropriate action, as empowered under the aircraft rules and act, will be taken.”
He delivered a clear warning to the industry, stating, “No airline, however large, will be permitted to cause such hardship to passengers through planning failures, non-compliance or non-adherence to statutory provisions.”
Concurrently, the aviation regulator has taken direct action to force operational discipline. The DGCA has directed IndiGo to reduce its scheduled flights by 5% across its network. The order specifically targets high-demand, high-frequency routes and aims to avoid single-flight operations on a sector, indicating a push for more reliable scheduling.
The directive follows a DGCA analysis revealing a significant gap between IndiGo’s approved schedules and its actual operational capacity. According to a government notification:
For November 2025, IndiGo was approved for 64,346 flights (15,014 weekly departures) but operated only 59,438, with 951 cancellations.
Despite being allowed a 6% schedule enhancement for the Winter Schedule 2025 (with 403 aircraft), the airline could only deploy 339 aircraft in October and 344 in November.
The analysis concluded that IndiGo increased its departures by 9.66% compared to the previous winter schedule but “has not demonstrated an ability to operate these schedules efficiently.”
The airline has been instructed to submit a revised, reduced schedule to the DGCA.
The ministerial statement and regulatory action come after over a week of severe travel chaos for thousands of IndiGo passengers, with last-minute cancellations and prolonged delays becoming commonplace. The crisis has been widely linked to a combination of factors, including crew scheduling software issues and potential shortages, exacerbated by the airline’s aggressive growth targets.
As India’s largest carrier with a domestic market share exceeding 60%, IndiGo’s operational instability has a disproportionate impact on the national aviation ecosystem. The government’s public reprimand and the DGCA’s imposition of a flight cut underscore a hardening stance against operational lapses by major airlines, prioritizing passenger rights and systemic reliability over unchecked expansion.
The aviation sector and affected passengers now await IndiGo’s formal response to the show cause notices and its revised flight schedule, hoping for a swift return to normalcy in the busy holiday travel period.
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