Every few years, India gets a reminder of just how fragile its aviation ecosystem really is. This time, it took a week-long meltdown at IndiGo a prominent airline service, hundreds of cancellations, airports reduced to holding zones for luggage, and passengers stranded across the country, to expose a truth policymakers prefer to ignore: when a major chunk of the market is controlled by just two airlines, one company’s internal crisis becomes a national emergency. IndiGo’s shortage of pilots, triggered by the rollout of long-delayed fatigue-management rules, should have disrupted one airline. Instead, it paralysed India’s entire aviation network .

Fares shot up to Rs40,000-80,000, refunds lagged for days, and alternative carriers simply didn’t have the capacity to absorb the shock. In a competitive market, passengers would have options. In India’s duopolistic one, they had none. The fatigue rules themselves were not the villain. Pilot exhaustion is a well-documented safety threat globally, and aligning India’s Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) with international norms is long overdue. But the transition was........

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