India’s largest airline, IndiGo, vacated 717 slots at various domestic airports after aviation watchdog DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) curtailed its winter flight schedule by 10 per cent in December, said sources.
The flight cuts followed massive flight disruptions by IndiGo in December due to faulty implementation of the latest pilot rest and duty norms as mandated by the government in November. The DGCA’s flight curtail orders were aimed at preventing last-minute cancellations and ensuring operational stability.
Out of the 717 slots (a particular time period given to an airline for takeoff and landing of aircraft) that IndiGo was forced to vacate, as many as 364 are from six key metro airports – Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad – with majority vacated slots being from Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Sources say the vacated slots are spread over the January-March period, with 361 slots vacated for March, 43 for February, and 361 for January.
The civil aviation ministry on Thursday also asked other airlines to submit their requests for operating domestic flights on the slots vacated by IndiGo. “IndiGo has submitted a list of 717 slots to the ministry, which it has vacated after the domestic winter schedule was reduced by 10 per cent in early December last year,” one of the sources said.
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As part of its winter schedule for 2025-26, IndiGo was allowed to operate 15,014 flights per week, which comes to 2,144 flights per day. In its summer schedule, it operated an average of 2,022 flights a day. A 10 per cent reduction has now brought total domestic flights per day to 1,930.
Between December 3 and 5 last year, IndiGo cancelled 2,507 flights and 1,852 flights were delayed, impacting over 3 lakh passengers at airports across the country.
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