Indigo cancels 50 flights at various airports on 23 Dec

Domestic carrier IndiGo, which remains under regulatory scrutiny following widespread operational disruption earlier this month, cancelled around 50 flights on Tuesday, 23 December, according to information available on the airline’s website.

The cancellations were spread across multiple airports, including Mumbai, Delhi, Varanasi, Pune, Chandigarh, Amritsar, Indore and Patna, indicating that the disruption was not limited to any single region or route cluster. The airline did not issue any immediate explanation for the cancellations, continuing a pattern that has drawn criticism from passengers and regulators alike.

Tuesday’s cancellations come even as IndiGo is operating under a curtailed winter schedule imposed by the government after a dramatic collapse in operations earlier this month. Under its original winter deployment plan, the airline had been permitted to operate 15,014 domestic flights per week, or about 2,144 flights per day — roughly six per cent higher than the 14,158 weekly flights it operated during the summer schedule of 2025.

However, following a wave of disruptions that led to the cancellation of thousands of flights and caused severe hardship to lakhs of passengers across the country, aviation authorities stepped in. At the height of the crisis, IndiGo had cancelled as many as 1,600 flights in a single day, triggering chaos at airports, sharp fare spikes on remaining seats, and widespread complaints from stranded travellers.

In response, the government ordered a 10 per cent cut in the airline’s winter schedule, effectively reducing its permitted domestic operations by about 214 flights per day. As a result, IndiGo is currently capped at operating no more than 1,930 domestic flights daily, excluding international and cargo services.

The scale of the disruption also prompted India’s aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), to initiate a formal probe into the airline’s internal systems and preparedness. The regulator constituted a four-member panel to examine IndiGo’s manpower planning, fluctuating crew rostering practices, and its ability to comply with revised flight duty time limitations and mandatory rest norms for pilots.

These norms, aimed at improving safety and reducing fatigue, have been cited by industry observers as a key stress point for airlines that expanded aggressively without proportionate increases in trained crew strength.

As part of the inquiry, the DGCA has already summoned and questioned IndiGo’s top leadership, including chief executive officer Pieter Elbers and chief operating officer Isidre Porqueras. Officials familiar with the process said the focus of the questioning was on whether systemic shortcomings — rather than one-off disruptions — were responsible for the airline’s operational breakdown.

The probe panel’s report is expected later this week and is likely to influence both regulatory action and future capacity approvals for the airline. Until then, continued cancellations such as those seen on Tuesday are expected to keep pressure on IndiGo, which dominates India’s domestic aviation market, as well as on the civil aviation ministry to demonstrate that the crisis is firmly under control.

With PTI inputs