New Delhi: Thousands of passengers were left stranded across airports after IndiGo’s mass cancellation of flights continued for the third consecutive day.
The airline attributed the chaos to a number of things, including schedule modifications, technical issues and a personnel shortfall brought on by revised crew rostering regulations.
On Thursday, India’s largest airline cancelled at least 175 flights, leaving passengers at major airports in New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune and Bengaluru angry and upset. The day before, at least 150 flights were cancelled. According to a Reuters report, 73 flights were cancelled at Bengaluru airport, its spokesperson said. Around 30 were cancelled in Delhi, and 68 in Hyderabad.
The airline in a statement Wednesday said it has made “calibrated adjustments” in its flight schedule for the next 48 hours to help restore its operations. Operational challenges such as minor technology glitches, winter schedule changes, adverse weather conditions, air congestion and “updated crew rostering rules had a negative compounding impact on our operations”, it said.
As the interruption persisted into the third day, shares of InterGlobe Aviation Ltd., the company that runs the basic carrier, fell as high as 3.4 percent Thursday.
The Federation of Indian Pilots said IndiGo was not able to make timely roster adjustments and plan its schedule properly due to new rules that increased pilot rest periods and introduced some restrictions on night flying. The FDTL rules, announced last year, went into effect on 1 November.
IndiGo officials will be meeting India’s aviation authority DGCA to outline their plan for restoring normalcy, according to a statement from the regulator. However, the low cost carrier has cautioned the disruptions could continue for another 48 hours.
The situation concerning the recent flight cancellations across India allegedly attributed to pilot shortage due to new Flight Duty Time Limit (FDTL) norms, raises significant questions about the airline’s management, regulatory oversight by the DGCA, and market fairness. The… pic.twitter.com/U7AoR3EVD7
— ANI (@ANI) December 4, 2025
New rules, software update & glitches
New norms by DGCA reduce flight times to 8 hours per day, 35 hours per week, 125 per month and 1,000 hours per year. Additionally, the new norms mandate that the crew receives rest periods equal to twice their flight times, with a minimum of 10 hours’ rest within any 24-hour window.
Captain CS Randhawa, president of the Federation of Indian Pilots said on the delays and cancellations, “Indigo operates approximately 2,200 flights all over India… Most of these flight disruptions, cancellations, and delays have been attributable to, firstly, the crew shortage… Secondly, they have been inducting aircraft… Third…. The crew rostering of the pilots was totally inappropriate… Last, after the second phase of FDTL (Flight Duty Time Limitation), new CARs (Civil Aviation Requirements) came into effect… they immediately approached the DGCA and sought a variation.”
Captain Randhawa said the airline has to take a lot of “remedial measures”. “What added to the chaos was reported failures in check-ins and departure control systems in Bengaluru, Pune and Delhi airports,” he said.
Airport authorities in Pune, Bengaluru and Delhi confirmed that compliance with FDTL revisions led to delays and cancellations.
The issue of a software glitch with some Airbus SE aircraft may have been one of the factors that caused the earlier delays, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. About 338 aircraft in India, 200 of them with IndiGo, required an emergency software fix for Airbus A320 planes. The fixes were completed by Wednesday.
(Edited by Prerna Madan)
Also read: IndiGo reports flight disruptions over tech issues, airport congestion and operational requirements