IndiGo cancelled at least 250 flights as widespread disruption persisted at major Indian airports, with the airline grappling to comply with tough new crew rostering regulations. The previous day, the carrier had scrapped a minimum of 150 flights and stated it was making “calibrated adjustments” to its schedule over the following 48 hours.
The sudden wave of cancellations left thousands of passengers stranded, sparked heated confrontations at check-in counters and departure gates, and prompted the airline to issue a public apology while cautioning that further disruptions could persist until Friday.
“We acknowledge that IndiGo’s operations have been significantly disrupted across the network for the past two days, and we sincerely apologise to our customers for the inconvenience caused,” an IndiGo spokesperson said in a statement. The airline attributed the meltdown to a combination of factors: technology glitches, adverse weather conditions, rising air-traffic congestion, and the recent implementation of revised Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) that took effect in November.
At the heart of Wednesday’s crisis was an emergency software patch applied to the Airbus A320 fleet’s systems over the weekend of November 29–30. The update, intended as a quick fix, inadvertently threw crew-pairing and rostering algorithms into disarray at the precise moment when IndiGo was already operating with virtually no buffer because of the tougher FDTL rules that cap pilots’ and cabin crew’s maximum duty periods and mandate longer rest intervals.
DGCA data underscores how strained the airline had already become: in November alone, IndiGo cancelled 1,232 flights, of which 755 were directly linked to FDTL compliance issues. Its on-time performance plummeted from 84.1% in October to just 67.70% the following month.
The chaos was compounded by separate baggage-system failures at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport. According to a senior government official, “While the issue at T3 was minor, T1 faced severe issues starting at around 1.30 pm and continuing up to around 6 pm.” The system repeatedly failed to provide accurate baggage information, leaving passengers waiting for hours and, in many cases, boarding flights without their checked luggage. IndiGo declined to comment specifically on the baggage-system outages, though multiple travellers reported an acute shortage of ground staff to assist them.
Airport-by-airport tallies painted a grim picture:
- Delhi: at least 67 IndiGo flights cancelled (37 departures, 30 arrivals)
- Bengaluru: 42 cancellations
- Hyderabad: 40 cancellations (19 departures, 21 arrivals)
- Mumbai: 33 cancellations (17 departures, 16 arrivals)
Social media platforms were inundated with videos of angry crowds surrounding airline counters, passengers sleeping on airport floors, and elderly travellers in distress.
For many flyers, the disruption turned routine domestic legs into ordeals lasting entire days.
Seventy-six-year-old Gautam Patil, who had just completed a long-haul journey from Chicago with his 73-year-old wife, arrived in Delhi only to discover their onward flight to Ahmedabad had been scrapped. “We’ve been told that there’s a flight only after 5.30 am on Thursday. We don’t stay in Delhi and they have not given us any accommodation,” Patil said, visibly exhausted after more than 40 hours of continuous travel.
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In Pune, passenger Neha Mulay missed two onward connections to Kochi after her 5.55 am Bengaluru-bound flight was first delayed by four hours and then cancelled outright. “I lost two connecting flights to Kochi because of this,” she said.
Mohil Manish Shah, travelling from Delhi to Mumbai on IndiGo flight 6E-664 on Monday, recounted a five-hour ordeal marked by opaque communication. “When I reached Gate 34 at 5:45 pm, the gate agents informed me the flight was delayed by 15 minutes. This message kept repeating without any transparency. When passengers sought clarity, a customer representative stated one crew member had been called off at the last minute. We were then informed that boarding would commence at 7.30 pm. We were loaded onto buses to board the aircraft but had to wait in it for 30 minutes. The flight finally took off at 9.46 pm,” Shah said. The delay forced him to miss an important paid event in Mumbai despite having purchased a higher-fare ticket.
IndiGo stated it had begun “calibrated adjustments” to flight schedules and crew rosters and expected the situation to gradually stabilise over the next 48 hours, though it urged passengers to check the latest flight status before heading to the airport and to anticipate possible additional cancellations through Friday.
Also Read: IndiGo told to explain mass cancellations, delays
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