IndiGo grapples with turbulence, cancels 180 flights from Bengaluru, Hyderabad

IndiGo’s flight disruptions stretched into an eighth consecutive day on Tuesday, grounding around 180 flights from Bengaluru and Hyderabad as the crisis at India’s largest domestic carrier shows no immediate signs of abating, sources said.

At Hyderabad airport, the airline halted 58 flights, including 14 arrivals and 44 departures, while Bengaluru saw 121 cancellations, split between 58 arrivals and 63 departures. Passengers faced mounting uncertainty as schedules were disrupted across the two major southern hubs.

The airline now faces more than operational setbacks: the government has signalled potential penalties in the form of route curtailments. Union civil aviation minister K. Rammohan Naidu indicated that IndiGo’s winter schedule will see certain routes reduced and reallocated to other domestic carriers. “We will definitely reduce the number of routes… This will be a kind of penalty on the airline,” Naidu told DD News on Monday, underscoring that routes will only return to IndiGo once the carrier proves its operational reliability.

This comes as a sharp blow to the Gurugram-based airline, which dominates the domestic skies, operating over 2,200 flights per day to more than 90 domestic and 40 international destinations, and commanding over 65 per cent of India’s domestic traffic.

Just on Monday, the airline had cancelled more than 560 flights from six metro airports, compounding the woes of travellers across the country.

As passengers navigate the ripple effects of these cancellations, the industry watches closely. IndiGo, once the poster child of India’s low-cost aviation sector, now finds itself under intense scrutiny, balancing the twin pressures of operational recovery and regulatory oversight.

With PTI inputs