IndiGo Meltdown: What Went Wrong, What’s Next
Photo Credit: An IndiGo plane at Bengaluru Airport. Pexels / Madvortex
Skift Take
The dominant player of the world’s third-largest aviation market was reminded this week that “Hope is not a Strategy” as it witnessed widespread cancellations.
IndiGo, India’s largest airline, has spent the past week scrambling to contain a cascading operational meltdown. What began on December 2 as a cluster of disruptions quickly ballooned into thousands of canceled flights and severe delays.
The airline, which has built its brand on on-time performance over the past two decades and operates two of the three daily flights in India, cancelled about 3,000 flights in the past week, with 1,000 flights on one day at the peak. On-time performance was just 3.7% across the six major Indian metros on December 5.
IndiGo has attributed its problems to a combination of factors: technology glitches, adverse weather, winter schedule changes, and congestion.
Most notable were the tougher Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) requirements, which specify how long a pilot can operate flights before rest is required to reduce fatigue. Significant changes were made to night operations.
IndiGo, which opera
