Cancellation of around 5,000 flights in a week’s time in peak season, resulted in widespread chaos, with irate passengers venting their ire on hapless airline staff in impossibly crowded airport terminals, mountains of luggage clogging airports, airfares skyrocketing for flights that were taking off, tariffs of hotels going through the roof ~ leading to disruptions in wedding celebrations, concerts, meetings, conferences, sports events, and the like.

Strange scenes unfolded, like a bride and groom attending their own wedding reception virtually, and glitterati, who would rather die but not travel by train, begging for train tickets. The fact that this nation-wide mayhem was caused by a minor change in pilot rest rules, and the cancelled flights were of only one airline, Indigo, points to a deeper malaise. To recount: the Directorate General for Civil Aviation (DGCA), the designated regulator for civil aviation sector, notified an amendment in Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) rules in January 2024, that provided for more rest period for pilots. The amended rules were supposed to apply from 1 June 2024. All airlines opposed DGCA’s move, and it was decided that the new rules would be rolled out in two stages ~ partly on 1 July 2025, and the rest on 1 November 2025.

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Again, an extension till December was given. It appears that during the last two years, Indigo had added more routes and aircraft, but instead of hiring more pilots to implement the new rules, Indigo lobbied to roll back implementation of the rules, or at least have them delayed. With no advance preparation, implementation of the new rules was not possible for Indigo; faced with a greatly reduced availability of pilots, Indigo had no option but to cancel thousands of flights. The corporate greed of Indigo ~ an attempt to operate more flights, with fewer pilots ~ can be easily understood, but the present crisis brought into sharp focus the failure of institutions, specifically designed to see that things ran smoothly. At the first stage, the star-studded Board of Directors of Indigo airlines, failed to provide proper guidance to its CEO, and other top executives, to implement regulatory directives.

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However, this does not absolve DGCA of not monitoring the implementation of its own directions, that were issued in........

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