Pilot fatigue rules grounded for IndiGo till 10 Feb amid mega meltdown

New Delhi: India’s aviation network has been plunged into disruption, with nearly half of all domestic flights cancelled over the past three days—largely at IndiGo—stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers and forcing the regulator to blink and soften its newly-tightened pilot fatigue norms. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Friday gave IndiGo time until 10 February to comply with limits on consecutive night operations, a pause the government says is essential to restore stability even as pilots and safety experts warn the move undermines hard-won fatigue protections.

The directorate had proposed to roll out two rules for all airlines. The first, which came into effect from 1 July asked airlines to give pilots weekly rest of up to 48 hours, up from 36 hours, and also prohibited airlines from substituting pilots’ leave—casual, sick, or earned—with weekly rest. This rule has been rolled back.

The second rule, which came into effect on 1 November and limited pilots to flying two back-to-back times between midnight and 6 am, will apply to all airlines except InterGlobe Aviation's IndiGo, India's largest carrier by fleet and service size and market share, which gets additional time.

Implementation of this rule meant carriers would need to hire more pilots, as one pilot could only fly a plane at night for two consecutive nights and would have to rest for the third one.

On Friday, the third straight day of inconvenience for passengers, the civil aviation ministry said it had set up a four-member panel to probe the meltdown of operations at IndiGo. The panel is expected to submit its findings in 15 days, the aviation regulator said in a statement.

“DGCA has granted one time exemption on specific requirements of Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) norms to M/s Indigo till 10th February 2026,” said a press release by the aviation regulator. “This exemption has been granted solely to facilitate operational stabilization and in no way amounts to dilution of safety requirements. During this period, DGCA would review after every fifteen days, the action taken by M/s Indigo to address the situation, including hiring of adequate crew to ensure FDTL compliance.”

IndiGo said it has had to cancel over 1,000, or about half, of its scheduled 2,200 domestic flights, as the airline had not planned to have enough pilots to comply with the new norms. IndiGo had already cancelled over 1800 flights between 1 and 4 December.

Passengers are expected to face hardships in the coming week, as IndiGo, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of the country’s 3,785 daily flights, has said it will take 5-10 days to return to normal.

In a short video address, IndiGo cheif executive officer Pieter Elbers said IndiGo expects cancellations on Saturday to be “below 1,000” and that the “FDTL relief is of great help”. The airline expects normalcy to return between “10 and 15 December”, he said.

Trickle impact

The IndiGo planes parked in bays had a cascade effect on other airlines, including Air India and Akasa. Despite having hired enough pilots in anticipation of the proposed rules that were more than two years in the making, these airlines also saw delays and cancellations.

Friday was a nightmare for passengers, with many stranded at airports and waiting endlessly after airlines cancelled flights. As cancellations soared, the aviation regulator initially tried a calibrated approach to manage the disruption. In the afternoon, it first relaxed the weekly leave norms, allowing airlines to adjust pilots' weekly rest time and granting a special relaxation to IndiGo. By the evening, the ministry announced these rules would be put in abeyance for Indigo.

The regulator's staance shift prompted many industry experts and pilots to express their anguish.

“The rollback even for one airline reflects very poorly on India’s civil aviation regulator. It simply buckled under pressure from this one carrier,” said Mark D. Martin, chief executive of Martin Consulting and an aviation safety expert.

“This will push Indian aviation back,” said Sanjay Lazar, chief executive of Avialaz Consulting. “Imagine the US transport secretary ever overruling an FAA directive on safety-based duty times (other than in cases of war). Unthinkable. India is the world’s fastest growing aviation market & third largest, without a stable FDTL on par with global standards of safety and fatigue management.”

None of the airlines, including IndiGo, Air India, Akasa and SpiceJet, responded to Mint’s queries on the development.

IndiGo has linked these cancellations primarily to the revised crew rostering norms. The revised norms called for 48 hours of weekly rest for pilots, defined night duty as midnight to 6 am and restricted night-time landings to two, among other changes. Now in abeyance, airlines follow older rules that include 36 hours of weekly rest for pilots, night duty defined as midnight to 5 am, among others.

Between 1 and 5 December, InterGlobe's share price fell 7.3% while the benchmark index Nifty gained 0.4% over the period.

The Airlines Pilot Association of India (Alpa), in a strongly worded letter, objected to the relaxations granted by the regulator, pointing out that the relief is specific to one airline and is against the interest of pilots. It calls such a precedent “dangerous” and “indefensible.”

What-went-wrong-probe

According to Gagan Dixit, senior vice-president oil & gas and aviation at Elara Securities, the underlying issue continues to be IndiGo’s night-heavy, high-utilisation model, which is very sensitive to stricter fatigue norms and limited cockpit buffers, and remains unresolved.

“A high-level inquiry into ‘what went wrong at IndiGo’ adds a governance overhang even as near-term operational risk recedes,” Dixit said.

Although the regulator repeatedly warned airlines to prepare for the new norms, IndiGo did not properly plan its manpower, training or rosters. As a result, the airline faced a severe pilot shortage, causing 170-200 daily cancellations late November, more than any other carrier. The committee will review what went wrong, check whether IndiGo followed the rules, fix accountability, and evaluate the steps the airline is now taking to restore normal operations.

Passenger outburst

Amid mounting public anger on social media, political leaders—including opposition leader Rahul Gandhi—also weighed in. On Friday afternoon, Gandhi, in a post on X, said: “IndiGo fiasco is the cost of this Govt’s monopoly model. Once again, it’s ordinary Indians who pay the price - in delays, cancellations, and helplessness. India deserves fair competition in every sector, not match-fixing monopoly.”

A Delhi-Mumbai flight, which normally costs around ₹6,000-8,000, has shot up to as much as ₹24,774 on the MakeMyTrip website. During the day, prices for a Mumbai-Delhi flight hit ₹46,000.

Passengers voiced their frustration across Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru airports.

A passenger requesting anonymity said he reached Bengaluru airport at 6 am on Friday for an 8.15 am flight to Kolkata. To his surprise, the boarding pass did not even have a gate number. After nine hours and repeated requests for updates, he was informed at around 2 pm that the flight had been cancelled. It then took another three hours to retrieve his baggage that required him to fill out a form. The passenger had originally booked the ticket for about ₹9,000. The same for the next day now costs around ₹23,040.

Tarun Kumar, a 32-year-old software engineer, had booked a 4:10 pm flight from Bengaluru to Visakhapatnam for three people, along with a return flight on Monday, for a total of ₹29,000. His flight was cancelled today, and according to MakeMyTrip, a one-way ticket on the same route now costs Rs.17,580 per person.