It’s all about the money, honey…and a dash of blackmail

Now that the ‘Fasten your seat belt’ signs have been switched off and IndiGo’s schedule is limping back to normal, it seems like a good time to try and figure out the real cause of the fiasco.

Was the airline and its Board of Directors caught napping by the DGCA’s November deadline for switching to FDTL norms? Did they think the government would not enforce the new Flight Duty Time Limits? Did they miscalculate the number of pilots needed under the new rules (as IndiGo’s CEO conveniently ‘admitted’)? The received wisdom of all the experts tells us that the answer to all three questions is a resounding ‘Yes!’

Having become a hardened sceptic since 2014, I am not all that sure. As a layman, what I can clearly see is that IndiGo has dished up a smorgasbord of blackmail and profiteering, its board of directors (BOD) confident in the belief that the Rs 37 crore electoral bond donation to the BJP (post-Covid) would ensure that the regulator (who else but the Directorate General of Civil Aviation) would look the other way, as all regulators do.

The whole thing appears to be deliberate, not negligence simpliciter, born out of a feeling of arrogance based on market share and the knowledge that the regulator was firmly in its pocket.

IndiGo’s BOD reads like a Hall of Fame, comprising people with vast experience of managing large organisations and dealing with government regulations. I cannot therefore accept that they were unaware of the implications of the new FDTL, both in terms of finances and HR, or of what would happen to their operational schedules after 1 November 2025 if they did not take immediate action to recruit more pilots.

This assumption is borne out by the fact that IndiGo added 200 daily flights to its operations in 2025, taking the figure to nearly 2,500 flights a day. But — and this is the giveaway — it added only 418 pilots (Business Today, 8 Dec 2025).

The airline’s reluctance to hire enough pilots gives us a clue as to why it did not prepare to implement the new FDTL. Under these changed rules, it needed to recruit at least 1,000 more pilots — its failure to do so is what led to the chaos in the first week of December. Did its business model (BM) anticipate the chaos but decide to do nothing anyway, to make some more bucks? Quite a few bucks, actually. I see three distinct revenue earning components in this BM:

1. The median monthly wage of a commercial pilot in India is about Rs 5 lakh, annual Rs 60 lakh. Adding various flying allowances, this figure would go up to about Rs 80 lakh per annum. For the 1,000 additional pilots needed, therefore, IndiGo would have had to incur an additional expenditure of Rs 800 crore per annum. By not recruiting them, the airline saved Rs 1,460 crore over the 18-month implementation period, giving the phrase ‘low-cost airline’ an entirely new meaning! Enough to cock a snook at the government.

2. IndiGo could not have been unaware that it would have to cancel a large number of flights when the new FDTL came into effect. (As I write, around 5,000 flights have been cancelled since 4 December.) Cancelling in advance should not have been difficult, as the airline’s sophisticated software can calculate, match and project crew and flight schedules. Instead, it went ahead and accepted bookings for all flights as if it were business as usual. The resultant chaos affected about 500,000 passengers. Time for some calculations to compute how many extra bucks IndiGo must have made out of this.

The airline offers full refunds only for those flights it cancels; if a passenger cancels, then almost half the fare is forfeited as cancellation charges. This is where the catch — and the profiteering — lies. The airline’s SOP is to avoid announcing cancellations in advance — even when it is inevitable — opting instead to delay flights incrementally, sometimes for 8 to 10 hours, before finally calling it off.

When this becomes a regular feature, chaos ensues, passengers panic and start cancelling their tickets. That’s when the big bucks come rolling in.

Assuming that half of the 500,000 affected passengers aborted their flights themselves, and assuming that the average ticket price was Rs 10,000 (both reasonable assumptions), then the airline stood to make Rs 125 crore from this planned extortion.

3. IndiGo also profits from the other 50 per cent — which it will refund at leisure — by sitting on Rs 125 crores for at least a month, using it as free working capital!                       

Nothing will happen to its share prices, notwithstanding the public outrage, because the fliers don’t have a choice. IndiGo shares dipped by single digits for a day, but are now back on track.

The stock market is amoral and reacts only to ground realities. And the reality is that the consumer in India doesn’t count. S/he is at the mercy of monopolies and duopolies — public or private — in telecom, ports, airports, highways, cement, media and even railways. S/he has no hope of redress because the regulators serve the interests of the industries and businesses they are meant to regulate, not that of the consumer.

And the government doesn’t give a damn since it continues to win elections by landslides. It doesn't have to listen to the voter because it locks up the needed votes long before any voter even sets foot in a polling booth.

As expected, the coverup has begun, with an inquiry ordered, show cause notices issued and a 10 per cent reduction in IndiGo flights — this is not even a band-aid. What needs to be done — immediately — is the following:

§  Sack the civil aviation minister, the secretary (aviation) and the DGCA. They need to go, not only for having allowed this fiasco to play out, but also because they (a) allowed IndiGo to acquire a near-monopoly status, (b) failed to monitor the airline’s implementation of the FDTL rules for over 18 months, (c) allotted another 200 routes this year without verifying its capacity to operate them as per the new rules, (d) succumbed to blackmail and deferred the implementation of FDTL only for IndiGo, further compromising passenger safety, (e) allowed 53 per cent of DGCA’s staff complement to remain vacant, severely affecting its functioning.

§  Sack IndiGo’s entire board of directors for having failed to implement government regulations, compromising safety and causing avoidable trauma, misery and financial loss to millions of passengers. They have proved that they are either over-rated showmen or under-rated extortionists. As for the blundering foreign CEO, maybe the prime minister should direct his ‘Macaulay mindset’ barbs at the need to hire white-skinned people for top jobs, ignoring swadeshi talent?

§  Release relevant extracts of the minutes of the BOD’s meetings over the last 18 months where the FDTL was discussed, so that the public can be made aware of the actual reasons for not implementing the new rules.

§  Reduce IndiGo’s routes by at least 25 per cent, as it has demonstrated it lacks the capacity to operate them safely and is only being a dog in the manger. Allot these routes to other, compliant airlines.

§  Order IndiGo to refund the entire ticket price (including taxes) of all tickets cancelled from 2 December onwards, regardless of whether it was cancelled by the flyer or by the airline. It should not be allowed to profit from its own incompetence or the consumers’ pain.

§  Ensure financial compensation of at least Rs 10,000 for each passenger who was not informed of flight cancellation in advance and had to put up with hours of waiting at airports. This could be treated as part of the fine to be imposed on the company.

§  Impose a severe fine on the airline commensurate with the mayhem caused. I propose a fine of Rs 1 crore for every flight cancelled without at least 12 hours’ advance notice to the concerned passengers.

§  Common sense tells us that IndiGo cannot fully comply with the new FDTL rules even by February 2026. Therefore, the civil aviation ministry should make a public commitment that the new FDTL will not be deferred beyond February 2026 under any circumstances, and that IndiGo will be allowed to operate only as many routes as it has crew for according to the new rules. This roster should be submitted to the DGCA at least a month in advance of the new deadline, and it should be barred from making any bookings for flights it isn’t authorised to operate.

The lives of 180 million passengers cannot be held hostage any longer to a business model based on the arrogance of market share, blackmail and profiteering.

Views are personal

Avay Shukla is a retired IAS officer and author of Holy Cows and Loose Cannons — the Duffer Zone Chronicles and other works. He blogs at avayshukla.blogspot.com