DGCA, ministry clip IndiGo’s wings; Air India may get 60–70 new slots daily

In a rare and escalating intervention, India’s civil aviation regulator and the aviation ministry have moved to rein in IndiGo after a week-long operational meltdown that severely disrupted travel for thousands of passengers.

On Tuesday, the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) and Union civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu separately announced a 10% reduction in IndiGo’s overall schedule, a move that could open up valuable flying rights for rival carriers at the expense of India’s largest airline.

DGCA had initially ordered a 5% cut in its 8 December order that was released on Tuesday morning, but reviewed its order on Tuesday evening.

“The matter has been examined in the Ministry,” the DGCA’s evening release said. “ln view of the recent abnormal cancellations of lndiGo flights resulting in substantial disruption to air traffic across the country, it has been observed that the airline has not been able to adequately manage its operational resources, including aircraft and pilot crew. Accordingly, the approved winter schedule of lndiGo be reviewed and curtailed by minimum 10%.”

Earlier in the day, Naidu had tweeted on X, “The Ministry considers it necessary to curtail the overall Indigo routes, which will help in stabilizing the airline’s operations and lead to reduced cancellations. A curtailment of 10% has been ordered. While abiding with it, Indigo will continue to cover all its destinations as before.”

The curtailed flights are likely to be awarded to other airlines, according to an executive aware of the development, a fact that was later confirmed by the minister in an interview to DD News.

“We will definitely reduce the 2,200 routes in the winter schedule of IndiGo. We will give these routes to other airlines and once IndiGo indicates it can operate additional, we will give it to them also,” the minister said in the interview.

The executive cited above, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the beneficiary of these cuts is likely to be its rival airline, Air India, which has requested to increase daily flights by 60-70 in its winter schedule. The request is likely to be approved by DGCA, the executive added.

A 10% reduction in flights for Indigo could potentially reduce its market share by 4 percentage points to about 60%, according to Karan Khanna, lead analyst for hotels, aviation, property and small & midcaps at Ambit Capital. This would see its market share drop to lowest in the country’s domestic aviation market since 2023, he added.

The 10% schedule cut for IndiGo, if it continues for till February, works out to be over ₹2,000 crore of hit on its full year numbers. It will severely hit their bottomline. But it still does not mean they have wriggled out of the pilot requirement numbers. Post 10 February, if they do not get further relaxation on FDTL norms, they would have to get the pilots on-board or continue with reduced daily flights. It is a hit either ways,” said Mark D Martin, CEO, Martin Consulting.

The government order follows IndiGo’s cancellation of more than 2,000 flights over the past week, leaving thousands of passengers stranded. The airline cited a multitude of “unforeseen operational challenges”, primarily crew shortages triggered by new flight duty time limitation (FDTL) rules, which are designed to prevent pilot fatigue by capping flying hours and mandating rest periods.

The executive cited earlier said the routes where IndiGo has a monopoly will not be cut as much as high-traffic routes. Monopoly routes typically originate from tier-I cities and are destined for tier-II or tier-III cities, such as, say, from Bombay to Bareilly. Fares for the monopoly routes tend to be higher because of the lower frequency of flights.

According to Gagan Dixit, senior vice president oil & gas and aviation at Elara Securities, airlines typically earn 5-7% higher airfares from monopoly routes. Dixit added that Elara has estimated a 5% hit on IndiGo’s domestic revenue if the monopoly routes slots remain intact.

“This will mean…effectively giving Tata-owned Air India an advantage for the time being, especially in duopoly routes served between Tata Group airlines & IndiGo,” said Dixit.

Queries sent to Air India, the DGCA and the civil aviation ministry remained unanswered.

IndiGo expanded its winter schedule from around 14,158 weekly flights to over 15,014, adding 900 flights. The winter schedule runs from 26 October to 28 March, 2026. Air India has 611 daily departures in the winter schedule and 615 in the summer schedule.

“The DGCA has the power to curtail scheduled flight operations. It is within their mandate. The regulator, however, has not previously exercised this power. It would be the first such instance in India,” said Martin.

Another expert, Sanjay Lazar, welcomed the step and said it should have been done from day one of the crisis, noting that, had it been, there may not have been a need to grant FDTL rules dispensation to IndiGo for so long.

“It is time the government restructures aviation and makes sure no airline gets this kind of monopoly in future,” Lazar said, adding that the government needs to cut at least 250 flights a day (if other airlines can manage to operate those), “but kudos to the government, it’s the first small step”.