IndiGo CEO Piter Elbers to appear before DGCA

IndiGo cancelled 60 Bengaluru flights as DGCA intensified scrutiny amid major disruptions linked to staffing shortages and new crew duty norms. With declining pilot strength and planning lapses, regulators have deployed oversight teams while IndiGo leadership attributes the crisis to multiple “unanticipated” internal and external factors

Mumbai: Crisis-hit IndiGo cancelled 60 flights from Bengaluru Airport on Thursday, as safety watchdog DGCA tightened its scrutiny following large-scale disruptions in services on account of planning failures related to the implementation of new pilot and crew duty norms, a source said.

“IndiGo has cancelled 60 flights — 32 arrivals and 28 departures from Bengaluru Airport,” the source said.

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Meanwhile, IndiGo CEO Piter Elbers has been summoned by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to submit a comprehensive report, including data and updates, on the recent operational disruptions on Thursday.

On Wednesday, IndiGo cancelled 220 flights from across three key airports — Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai, with Delhi seeing the most cancellations at 137.

On Wednesday, IndiGo Chairman Vikram Mehta spoke for the first time in 10 days about the crisis, apologising for the chaos and attributing the massive disruptions to a combination of internal and external “unanticipated” events.

These “include minor technical glitches, scheduled changes linked to the start of the Winter season, adverse weather conditions, increased congestion in the aviation system, and implementation of/ and operation under the updated crew rostering rules,” Mehta said.

It is significant to note here that other Indian carriers also faced these “unanticipated external events “, but their operations remained largely unaffected.

It is pertinent to mention that, IndiGo has seen its pilots’ strength depleting by 378 pilots in the last nine months despite its chief operating officer and Accountable Manager, Isidro Porqueras stating to the DGCA in a letter last December that “the overall impact of implementing the proposed changes above (now-implemented FDTL) norms would amount to an approximate 3 per cent increase in crewing requirements.

As per a reply in Parliament to a member’s question earlier this year, IndiGo had employed 5,463 pilots as of March 20, 2025.

However, as per data presented by Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol on December 8 in reply to a Member’s question, IndiGo had employed 5,085 pilots.

Keeping a tight watch on IndiGo’s operations, the DGCA has decided to station its personnel at IndiGo’s headquarters, as it steps up oversight on India’s largest airline, which continues to cancel dozens of flights despite saying operations have stabilised.

The DGCA has formed an oversight team of eight senior captains, and two of them, along with two government officials, will be stationed at IndiGo’s Gurgaon headquarters to monitor cancellation status, crew deployment, unplanned leave, and routes hit by staff shortages.

These teams will submit a daily report to the regulator, as per an order.

Pilots’ body Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) in the recent past alleged that while all other airlines have provisioned pilots adequately and remain largely unaffected due to timely planning and preparation, the current disruption at IndiGo was the direct consequence of the airline’s “prolonged and unorthodox lean manpower strategy across departments, particularly in flight operations.”

Despite the two-year preparatory window before full FDTL implementation, the airline “inexplicably adopted a hiring freeze, entered non-poaching arrangements, maintained a pilot pay freeze through cartel-like behaviour, and demonstrated other short-sighted planning practices,” it said.