IndiGo, which was at the centre of a meltdown last week, is being asked tough questions, including about the airline’s management inefficiency. The airline, as you all must know, saw 1000s of flights cancelled from December 2 through 8, 2025, with the airline CEO confirming recovery on December 9, 2025. 3000 flights and 5.78 lakh bookings were affected.
IndiGo Operations Normalised | A Message From Pieter Elbers, CEO, IndiGo pic.twitter.com/VVB2yTsIBy
— IndiGo (@IndiGo6E) December 9, 2025
IndiGo ordered to scale down 10% on capacity
IndiGo was asked by the Government of India this morning to scale down its operations by 5%. The DGCA, India’s aviation regulator, shot off a letter to IndiGo this morning. Key observations made included:
- As per the Winter Schedule (WS) 2025 issued by DGCA, 15,014 departures per week were approved for IndiGo, totalling 64,346 flights for November 2025. 59,438 flights were operated in November 2025 (8% fewer than approvals), with 951 cancellations recorded.
- Compared to the Summer Schedule 2025, IndiGo was allowed a 6% schedule enhancement, with 403 aircraft, up from 351 in SS25. However, the airline could operate only 339 aircraft in October 2025 and 344 aircraft in November 2025.
The DGCA signed off by noting,
IndiGo has increased its departures by 9.66% compared to Winter Schedule 24 (WS 24) and by 6.05% compared to Summer Schedule 25 (SS 25). However, the airline has not demonstrated an ability to operate these schedules efficiently. Therefore, it is directed to reduce the schedule by 5% across sectors, especially on high-demand, high-frequency flights, and to avoid single-flight operations en a sector by Indigo.
Later in the day, though, they had a rethink, and issued a fresh order asking IndiGo to reduce the flights by 10%, and yet have the same constraints, whereby IndiGo could not get to leave sectors with one or two flights a day, but it will have to cut back from sectors with enhanced connectivity such as Mumbai – Delhi and Pune – Delhi and so on.
Here is the latest order.
These flights are going to be given to competitors. Air India will be delighted to receive more slots I believe, and so would Akasa. Although, it looks anti-public to call for this punishment now, when people are scheduled to fly for weddings, holidays and so on, given this is peak travel period.
Bottomline
IndiGo is in the eye of the storm, with the airline being asked to tone down its engagement and reduce 10% of flights sanctioned for the airline in the Winter 2025 schedule. This will mean that there will be a trim down of IndiGo services and other domestic carriers will get to add more services to make up for what is taken away from IndiGo.
What do you think about this move to discipling IndiGo?
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Neither the regulatory body nor the airline seems concerned about or willing to compensate the true victims in this situation, the customers. Their time and the frustration of waiting for hours before boarding, only to discover that the flight is delayed or cancelled, are being treated as if they don’t matter.
I wish some compensatory rules such as EU 261 are implemented in India.