In December 2025, IndiGo faced a massive meltdown, cancelling thousands of flights and leaving many people and pieces of luggage displaced in its wake. Since then, the airline has been investigated by the DGCA, India’s aviation regulator, and has now been subject to punitive action.
DGCA investigates IndiGo and fines them
India’s aviation regulator has taken one of its most consequential enforcement actions yet against a scheduled airline. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has imposed an INR 22.20 crore penalty on IndiGo following a detailed inquiry into the widespread flight disruptions that paralysed the airline’s network between December 3 and December 5, 2025. The action follows directions from the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) after thousands of cancellations and delays left passengers stranded across the country.
During the three-day period, IndiGo cancelled 2,507 flights and delayed 1,852 flights, affecting over three lakh passengers at multiple airports nationwide. Given the scale of disruption, DGCA constituted a four-member inquiry committee to conduct a comprehensive review of the circumstances that led to the breakdown of operations. The committee examined the airline’s network planning, crew rostering practices, operational software systems, management oversight structures, and compliance with the revised Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) regulations.
The inquiry concluded that the disruptions were not caused by a single trigger but by a series of systemic failures within IndiGo’s operational framework. DGCA found that the airline had excessively over-optimised its operations, leaving little margin to absorb routine disruptions. This was compounded by inadequate regulatory preparedness, shortcomings in software support systems, and gaps in management oversight and operational control. The committee observed that IndiGo failed to adequately identify planning deficiencies, maintain sufficient operational buffers, and effectively implement the revised FDTL provisions introduced ahead of the Winter 2025 schedule.
A central theme in DGCA’s findings was IndiGo’s overriding focus on maximising utilisation of crew, aircraft, and network resources. Crew rosters were designed to maximise duty periods, relying heavily on dead-heading, tail swaps, extended duty patterns, and minimal recovery margins. While such practices can improve short-term efficiency, DGCA concluded that they significantly eroded roster integrity and compromised operational resilience. Once disruptions began, the airline’s tightly stretched system was unable to recover, resulting in cascading delays and large-scale cancellations that inconvenienced passengers nationwide.
The regulator also identified leadership and governance failures at the highest levels of the airline. DGCA issued a formal caution to IndiGo’s CEO for inadequate overall oversight of flight operations and crisis management. A warning was issued to the Accountable Manager and Chief Operating Officer for failing to properly assess the impact of the Winter 2025 schedule and the revised FDTL requirements. The Senior Vice President overseeing the Operations Control Centre was warned for systemic planning failures and directed to be relieved of current operational responsibilities, with instructions not to be assigned any accountable position. Additional warnings were issued to senior officials in flight operations and crew resource planning, and IndiGo has been directed to take action against any other personnel identified through its internal inquiry and submit a compliance report to DGCA.
The INR 22.20 crore penalty itself is structured as a combination of systemic penalties and prolonged non-compliance charges under the Aircraft Rules, 1937. DGCA imposed one-time systemic penalties totalling INR 1.80 crore, arising from multiple violations of Civil Aviation Requirements, including failure to establish effective FDTL compliance systems, inadequate buffer margins in roster planning, improper delegation of operational control, and failures of accountable management to ensure safe and compliant operations.
In addition, DGCA levied a continued non-compliance penalty of INR 20.40 crore, after determining that IndiGo remained in violation of revised FDTL provisions for 68 consecutive days, from December 5, 2025, to February 10, 2026. This penalty was calculated at INR 30 lakh per day, making it one of the largest cumulative enforcement actions ever imposed on an Indian airline.
Beyond financial penalties, DGCA has ordered IndiGo to furnish a bank guarantee of INR 50 crore, linked to a regulator-monitored reform framework titled the IndiGo Systemic Reform Assurance Scheme (ISRAS). The phased release of this bank guarantee is tied to DGCA-verified implementation of reforms across leadership and governance, manpower planning and fatigue risk management, digital systems and operational resilience, and board-level oversight. Each stage of release will require independent certification by DGCA, ensuring sustained compliance for up to 15 months.
DGCA acknowledged that IndiGo restored operations to near-normal levels within a relatively short period and complied with refund and passenger compensation requirements under applicable regulations. On MoCA’s directions, IndiGo has also extended a “Gesture of Care” voucher worth INR 10,000, valid for 12 months, to passengers whose flights were cancelled or delayed by more than three hours during the disruption window.
Overall, this is a small price that IndiGo will pay towards the massive disruptions of December 2025.
Bottomline
IndiGo has been fined INR 22.2 Crores for the disruptions the airline caused in December 2025. The airline has also been told to get rid of its head of the AOCC, and the rest of the management has been left with a warning. The airline will also issue a bank guarantee to the DGCA, which will be returned to it once it demonstrates structural changes at the airline level.
What do you think of the penalties imposed on IndiGo for the December meltdown?
Liked our articles and our efforts? Please pay an amount you are comfortable with; an amount you believe is the fair price for the content you have consumed. Please enter an amount in the box below and click on the button to pay; you can use Netbanking, Debit/Credit Cards, UPI, QR codes, or any Wallet to pay. Every contribution helps cover the cost of the content generated for your benefit.
(Important: to receive confirmation and details of your transaction, please enter a valid email address in the pop-up form that will appear after you click the ‘Pay Now’ button. For international transactions, use Paypal to process the transaction.)
We are not putting our articles behind any paywall where you are asked to pay before you read an article. We are asking you to pay after you have read the article if you are satisfied with the quality and our efforts.
Leave a Reply