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1 month ago
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Summary
The airline’s dominance and sub-par regulation are both to blame for the chaos that marooned passengers and sent fares soaring. The crisis demands antitrust scrutiny of IndiGo, a look at the case for its split-up and measures to ease market concentration—such as relief from the Airbus-Boeing duopoly
It is apparent that IndiGo has used its dominance of India’s air travel market to blackmail the authorities into giving it relief—albeit temporary—from compliance with tighter rules on night landings and how long and late into the wee hours pilots and crew can be put to work. In the process, it has penalized the vast majority of air travellers.
With the airline’s market share above 60%, its bulk cancellation of flights left passengers stranded and let rival operators fleece fliers with steep fares until the government stepped in to cap fares.
This has exposed a regulator powerless to enforce its fiat in the face of determined resistance by a dominant player. This cannot be allowed to stand. Antitrust action suggests itself. Stiff penalties must be levied. If IndiGo shows further obstinacy, it should face the threat of being split up to reduce market concentration.
That said, we must enable greater rivalry in Indian skies through various means. Efforts to develop and build a medium-haul passenger aircraft should be stepped up to deliver us from the global duopoly of Boeing and Airbus that has spelt long wait times for the delivery of such planes.
India’s revised flight duty time limits were issued in January 2024 by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Pleas by airlines pushed their implementation forth to July and November 2025 in two stages. Carriers that were making their crews work longer hours than the new norms would permit had sufficient time to hire personnel to keep operations running smoothly.
The rules were tweaked to ensure that passenger safety was not compromised by any gaps in concentration on the part of overworked and sleep-deprived pilots. No airline had complaints on this score.
Yet, both IndiGo and Air India had opposed the curtailment of a pilot’s night landings to two per flight-duty period, arguing that modern equipment made such limits redundant. They also suggested that the DGCA replace its night curbs with a modern fatigue-risk management system that models real data to optimize flying schedules for pilots and planes.
From the perspective of aircraft makers and the International Civil Aviation Organisation, this demand holds merit. The DGCA should have conceded it. Another lapse on the regulator’s part has been its failure to track the progressive readiness for rule compliance achieved by airlines—particularly by the dominant carrier.
However, there is no getting around the fact that the big problem in Indian civil aviation is structural: IndiGo’s outsized share of air traffic. How soon can we expect competition to keep airlines in check? Since it takes anywhere between five and seven years for new aircraft orders to be met, expanded operations by rivals cannot solve the problem in the short-run.
Alas, the world just does not have enough planes to meet rising demand for air travel. China has seized this opportunity by launching its Comac 919 competitor to the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 Max. Given India’s forecast of rapid growth in air traffic, we must double down on the project to build a similar plane in collaboration with Brazil’s Embraer.
In the interim, the full weight of regulation must come to bear on the market’s biggest carrier—including an antitrust probe. Aviation is a service that’s vital to the economy. To secure its future, we could begin by levying a fine on IndiGo that deprives it of profits from retaining longer hours for pilots till February 2026, with an additional penalty for the chaos created last week by its neglect.
English (US) ·