Now that the "Fasten seat belts" signs have been switched off and Indigo's schedule is beginning to return to normal, this is a good time to try and figure out the real cause of this fiasco. Not since the Champaran satyagraha of Mahatma Gandhi has indigo stirred up such a hornet's nest! Was the airline and its Board of Directors caught napping by the November deadline of DGCA? Did they think the govt. would not enforce the FDTL (Flight Duty Time Limits)? Did they miscalculate the number of pilots needed under the new rules (as the CEO of Indigo has conveniently "admitted")? The received wisdom of all the experts currently is that the answer to all three questions is a resounding YES. Having become a congenital skeptic since 2014, however, I am not all that sure. What I can clearly see, as a layman, is that Indigo has dished out a smorgasbord of blackmail and profiteering, its BOD confident in the belief that the Rs. 37 crore electoral bond donation to the BJP post Covid would ensure that the regulator (DGCA) would look the other way, as all regulators do. The whole thing appears to be deliberate, not negligence simpliciter, born out of a feeling of arrogance based on market share and the knowledge that the regulator was firmly in its pocket.
Indigo's BOD reads like a Hall of Fame, comprising of people with vast experience of managing large organisations and of dealing with govt. regulations; I cannot therefore accept that they were unaware of the implications of the new FDTL, both in terms of finances and HR, or of what would happen to their operational schedules after Nov. 1, 2025 if they did not take immediate action to recruit more pilots. This assumption is borne out by the fact that Indigo ADDED 200 daily flights to its operations in 2025, taking the figure of daily flights to almost 2500. But- and this is the giveaway- it added only 418 pilots (Business Today, 8th Dec. 2025).
The airline's reluctance to hire adequate number of pilots gives us a clue as to why it did not prepare for the implementation of the new FDTL. Under these changed rules it needed to recruit at least 1000 more pilots; its failure to do so is what has led to the chaos in the first week of December. Did its business model (BM) anticipate the chaos but it decided to do nothing anyway, in order to make some more bucks? Quite a few bucks, actually. I see three distinct revenue earning components in this BM:
[1] The median monthly wage of a commercial pilot in India is about Rs. 5 lakhs, annual Rs. 60 lakhs. Adding various flying allowances, this figure would go up to about Rs. 80 lakhs per annum. For the 1000 additional pilots needed, therefore, Indigo would have had to incur an additional expenditure of Rs. 800 crore per annum. By not recruiting them the airline has saved Rs. 1460 crore over the 18 month period given for implementing the FDTL rules (giving the phrase "low cost airline" an entirely new meaning!). Enough to cock a snook at the government.
[2] Indigo could not have been unaware that it would have to cancel a large number of flights when the new FDTL came into effect (because it had not recruited the additional pilots required)- the number of flights cancelled from December 4 in fact comes to about 5000 as I write this. It should not have been hard to do the cancellations in advance in an ordered manner because the airline has advanced software that can calculate/match/project the rostering of crew and flights. But it went ahead and accepted bookings for all flights as if it was business as usual. The resultant chaos led to cancellations for about 500,000 passengers. Time for some calculations to compute how much extra bucks Indigo must have made out of this.
The airline offers full refunds only for flights it itself cancels; if a passenger cancels then almost half the fare amount is forfeited as cancellation charges. This is where the catch (and the profiteering) lies: the airline SOP is not to announce cancellations in advance (even when it knows that the flight has to be cancelled eventually) but to keep delaying the flight incrementally, sometimes for 8 to 10 hours, till it finally announces cancellation. When this becomes a regular feature, chaos ensues, passengers panic and start cancelling themselves. This is where the big bucks come rolling in.
Assuming that half of the 500,000 cancelled passengers aborted their flights themselves, and assuming that the average ticket price was Rs. 10000 (both reasonable assumptions), then the airline stood to make Rs. 125 crores from this planned extortion. Indigo also profits from the other 50% (which it will refund at leisure) because it will sit on this Rs.125 crores for at least a month, using it as free working capital! Nothing will happen to its share prices, notwithstanding the public outrage, because the fliers don't have a choice. Indigo shares dipped by single digits initially for a day, but are now back on track. The stock market doesn't have a conscience or sense of right or wrong; it is amoral and reacts only to ground realities. And the reality is that the consumer or public in India now doesn't count, he is at the mercy of monopolies and duopolies, whether of the public or private sector- telecom, ports, airports, highways, cement, media, railways. He also doesn't have any redress because the Regulators serve the interests of the industries and businesses they are meant to regulate, and not that of the consumer. And the government doesn't give a damn since it continues to win elections by landslides; it doesn't have to listen to the voter because it locks up the needed votes long before any voter even sets foot in a polling booth.
The coverup has begun, as expected, with an inquiry ordered, show cause notices issued and a 10% reduction in Indigo's flights; this is not even a band-aid. What needs to be done-immediately- is the following:
* Sack the Civil Aviation Minister, the Secretary (Aviation) and the DGCA. They need to go, not only for having allowed this fiasco to play out, but also because of (a) allowing Indigo to acquire a near-monopoly status, (b) failing to monitor the airline's implementation status of the FDTL rules for over 18 months, (c) allotting it another 200 routes during this year without verifying its capacity to operate them as per the new rules, (d) succumbing to blackmail and deferring implementation of FDTL only for Indigo, further compromising passenger safety, (e) allowing 53% of DGCA's staff complement to remain vacant, severely affecting its functioning.
* Sack the entire Board of Directors of Indigo for having failed to implement govt regulations, compromising safety and causing avoidable trauma, misery and financial loss to millions of passengers. They have proved that they are either over-rated showmen or under-rated extortionists. As for the blundering foreign CEO, maybe the Prime Minister should direct his "Macaulay mind-set" barbs at the need to hire white skinned people for top jobs, ignoring swadeshi talent?
* Make public relevant extracts of the airlines' BOD minutes of the meetings over the last 18 months where the FDTL was discussed, so that the public can be made aware of the actual reasons for not implementing the new rules.
* Reduce Indigo's routes by at least 25% as it has just established that it has not developed the capacity to operate them all safely and is only acting as the dog in the manger. Allot these routes to other, compliant airlines.
* Order Indigo to make full refund of the entire ticket price (including taxes) of all tickets cancelled from 2.12.2025 onwards, regardless of whether it was cancelled by the flyer or by the airline itself. It should not be allowed to profit from its own incompetence or the consumers' pain.
* Ensure financial compensation of at least Rs. 10000 for each passenger who was not informed of his flight cancellation in advance and had to put up with hours of waiting at the airports. This could be treated as part of the fine to be imposed on the company.
* A severe fine commensurate with the mayhem it has caused should be imposed on the airline. One suggestion could be: a fine of Rs. 1 crore for every flight cancelled without at least a 12 hour advance notice to the passengers who had booked tickets.
* It is common sense that Indigo cannot fully comply with the new FDTL rules even by February 2026. Therefore the Civil Aviation Ministry should make a public commitment that the new FDTL will not be deferred beyond February 2026 under any circumstances, and that Indigo will be allowed to operate only as many routes as it has crews for according to the new rules. This roster should be submitted by it to the DGCA at least a month in advance of the new deadline, and it should not be allowed to make any bookings for the flights it will not be allowed to operate.
The lives of 180 million passengers cannot any longer be held hostage to a business model based on the arrogance of market share, blackmail and profiteering.
Dish out sufficient moolah to the dispensation and then go ahead and s**** the common man.
ReplyDeleteA formula which works wonders.