The Standard of Care IndiGo did not deliver upon during their Mass Cancellations

When an airline that controls 2/3 of India’s aviation capacity falters, things go massively wrong. All this week, we have seen the viral images of a system that broke down and was not fixed until it was too late. Eventually, aviation is a complex chain of events, and these things happen. Eventually, aviation ticks on 100s of systems working together. Sometimes a passenger service system goes down when the cloud goes down. Sometimes, the luggage belt gives up. Sometimes, there is a Cyber Attack. Sometimes there is a grounding. Sometimes there is a software issue.

When IndiGo left the people to fight for themselves

I’m sure we’ve all seen images all week of bags, people, and circumstances that were not arriving at their destinations because IndiGo did not deliver on its “on time promise”. It is usually a slick operation, and I’ve had deep respect for that ship. But sometimes there is plain stupidity, and that is what we’ve witnessed all week.  Or it was an act of connivance, as many conspiracy theorists are saying. What we know is that IndiGo did not have adequate pilots to operate its flights under the new FDTL, and they managed to turn a ton of plans to dust. Weddings, Funerals, Honeymoons, Exams. Without Exception. And it left nonchalance in its wake.

Kids waiting since 4 am for their @IndiGo6E flight at DEL T1
Hungry, tired & sleepy pic.twitter.com/SsYEn168E2

— Saurabh Sinha (@27saurabhsinha) December 5, 2025

What I’ve been telling people all week long has been, “They could be Stupid, but they couldn’t be Wicked”. Now, I don’t have an inside track to what really conspired at IndiGo leading up to this moment. I wouldn’t know. I will leave it to the government committee that is investigating this to pronounce upon. But I did see how heartless they were. And it was an act equivalent to that of a headless chicken crossing the road.

The usually cheeky airline just shut down and refused to communicate, even with their own people. As a consequence, those on the frontline did not have information to offer customers. And it leads to scenes like these across the airports.

Thanks @IndiGo6E for making Hyb airport into a "local railway station".. #Indigo #FlightDelays #hyderabad pic.twitter.com/7qUqLNILZp

— Chandramouli Vijay (@im_chandruu) December 4, 2025

There was a total social media blackout, with the airline not announcing an issue until December 4, 2025, for the first time. Till then, they were quiet and celebrating something on their X Feed.

And this is their website this morning—no mention of any issues on hand, just the usual cheer.

The airline was not communicating AT ALL. This is not how you handle a crisis, by living in Denial for three days.

What the airline could have done, but did not.

• The most ridiculous thing IndiGo did was not to handle the whole mess professionally. For instance, for the first three days (December 2-3-4), there was no resolution in sight. IndiGo knew there was a problem, but insisted that people stay inside the airport through repeated postponements, rather than offer a cancellation and send people home. It was in a state of readiness to depart (subject to getting a pilot) rather than in a state of “we cannot handle this, let’s at least release the passengers who are our prisoners right now”. There is a concept in the aviation industry of distress fares. But it costs money when one airline has to endorse its customers to another airline, especially on IndiGo’s scale. Also, IndiGo cannot access those fares because it does not have any arrangement with other airlines, such as Akasa, Air India, or SpiceJet, to have their passengers fly out on another carrier. Those serpentine queues could have been a little smaller, and the noise at the airport would have been less. But oh, the Hubris.
• Second, IndiGo could have cancelled flights more proactively, which would have helped them recover faster. Yes, they’d still be unpopular, but the recovery would have been faster. As someone outside the system, I find it so predictable to reset, but IndiGo took until day 4 to reach this conclusion and had to cancel 1000s of flights to get things back on track. Common sense is uncommon these days.
• Third, it takes time to organise hotel rooms in an international territory without ground handling. That is what happens with Air India when a plane lands in a Russian Village or in Myanmar. It shouldn’t happen in India, to India’s largest airline, which clearly did not have a contingency plan to round up as many hotel rooms as possible.
• Even providing meals or lounge access was a problem for IndiGo because there was either no authorisation to spend money to cover all the food available at the airport, or no intent. Hey, this is a part of the DGCA and the Ministry mandate to provide basics.

IndiGo, it was just being miserly

All of the above problems boil down to two issues. No empowerment of the people down the chain to endorse people to other airlines, no power to book hotels or provide refunds and so on. In my years working in the corporate arena, the one thing I’ve always been taught to think of is Reputation Risk. Here, IndiGo was okay with letting go of its 19 years of Brand Equity to save some bucks.

I’ve always believed in the mantra of “Do Unto Others as you’d want to be done to you.” This week was the antithesis of that adage. The last time I’ve seen this chaos play out was on Air Deccan in the early 2000s, with Indian Airlines in a December Fog cancellation in the 2000s, and then SpiceJet in 2013. Things happen, but at this scale, it has been a long, long while.

The Standard of Care that was never offered.

The airline should have had a simple playbook. Cancel now, grant a refund now, and handle the consequences later. It took IndiGo 4 days to conclude. Only on November 5, after my tweet (which I am sure some competent person at IndiGo had also thought about, not just me), did IndiGo put out a policy of offering full refunds for flights through December 15. What’s mortifying is that these full refunds are only in effect between December 5 and 15,  2025. What about the days of incompetence before? December 1 – 4, 2025, wasn’t a cake walk either, IndiGo.

What’s interesting is that @IndiGo6E has not put out a cancellation policy three days into this mess to encourage people to not travel if not needed https://t.co/T4zTjlUFAk

— Ajay Awtaney (@LiveFromALounge) December 5, 2025

And even when it came, IndiGo’s language was lame, and it was a non-apology. It was as if they went, Let’s get this out of the way.

Notice that IndiGo is not putting the name of anyone senior on this non-apology. It’s like they like to take credit for things done right, but when something goes wrong, it is “Team IndiGo”. Rahul Bhatia is a rare occurrence, but they could have at least put out the CXOs on the ground to pacify passengers? Even when the DGCA or the MoCA called them in for a dressing-down on December 4, none of them went over.

Reviewed the operations of Indigo along with senior officials of Ministry of Civil Aviation and DGCA. I have instructed the DGCA and concerned officials at the Ministry to keep a close watch on the network and directed Indigo to normalize the operations at the earliest. In… pic.twitter.com/ZdqFXPOAvM

— Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu (@RamMNK) December 4, 2025

Please keep in mind that IndiGo promises to refund to your account, but they are unable to process it online, so people are not receiving their full refund right now.

Since Indians love to compare ourselves with the Americans a lot, a carrier had a meltdown earlier this year, I cannot remember the name for the life of me. At the time, rooms were provided, or people were told to get their own rooms and meals, and they’d be refunded. And of course, anything they paid for due to the distress caused by the airline was refunded. From a toothbrush to a shirt to god knows what not. And other things were done for them. Out here, there is no compassion, no duty of care. Not even compliance with the DGCA’s Passenger Charter. It is just apparent defiance.

And I’m sure there are a ton of things I’ve missed, but one thing is clear. The lakhs of IndiGo customers found their trust broken this week; they are all pissed, and they will obviously keep this experience in mind the next time they book flights.

Bottomline

IndiGo let the nation down and made ambassadors miss out on travel, people miss out on meetings, weddings, funerals, exams, and all sorts of situations you can imagine. And they did not bother to treat them with respect either. They just stretched it far enough to make it a progressively worse situation, and did not offer any help to the customers stuck there due to IndiGo. All, because there was no empowerment on the ground and no empathy at the top, but rather the purse strings were kept tight. Or perhaps it was all unintentional, and they did not use common sense. We’ll never know. And since we will never learn from our mistakes, we will see this happen again.

Do you have an IndiGo experience to share this week? How did it work out for you? Tell us in the comments

---

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.