Forget flying, is IndiGo grounded?

Three seemingly-unrelated events may explain why IndiGo stalled in midair, and made life miserable for the thousands of passengers this month. More importantly, they may indicate why the airline is likely to get away with the brazen mistreatment of passengers. They highlight the issues that are wrong with it. The first dates to November 2023. A flight took off from Amritsar, with its destination being Chennai, via a stopover in Bengaluru. It landed in Bengaluru. Most passengers got off, but six of them, four elderly, had booked the tickets to Chenai, and paid the full fares to the destination.

Suddenly, the six were asked to disembark in Bengaluru, and told that another flight would immediately take them to Chennai. Unsuspectingly, they got down, and then were told that since no alternate flight was available, they would need to spend the night in Bengaluru. They flew down to Chennai the next morning. There were media reports about the seemingly-outrageous behaviour by the airline staff, and callous manner they treated the elderly customers. But this was it. After a couple of days, the story died down, possibly due to the pressures of the news cycle, and faded away.

The aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) did not take stringent action. The incident shows that despite being positioned as an airline that offered the best services to passengers, things were not quite normal. Most flyers thronged to IndiGo because of the low prices. But the low-price structure possibly nudged, or even forced, the airline to take shortcuts when it came to passenger services. The feeling among the airline and its staff was that they can get away with such things without any fallout.

Let us turn to the second event, which happened a few days ago. On December 10, 2025, a week or so after the IndiGo’s crisis erupted, Vikram Mehta, a well-known professional who was the CEO of several firms including MNCs, and is chairman, IndiGo, released a video. He was apologetic about the sufferings to the passengers. He swatted away the allegations that the airline deliberately engineered the flight delays and cancellations crisis because it did not want to follow the new and stringent norms related to the working hours for pilots and crew that were imposed by the DGCA.

If you have not seen the video, please do. If you have seen it, take another look. In the first few seconds, Mehta casually says that the crisis lasted for only three days between December 3-5, 2025. He mentions these dates so subtly to inform the world that after December 5, things were back to normal. The fact is that the day the video was released, December 10, IndiGo canceled more than 400 flights. Similar, or more, number of flights were cancelled or delayed every day since December 6, and this continued after December 10.

To give Mehta the benefit of doubt, one can presume that the dates were a slip-of-the-tongue, and he genuinely forgot or mistakenly assumed that the crisis phase was over. A more unfriendly explanation may be that Mehta assumed that the airline is too big to fail, has a commanding domestic market share of 65 per cent, and is unlikely to face the consequences that any other corporate entity may. If the second is correct, and we hope it is not, it smacks of overconfidence and arrogance. For some years now, critics have charged that IndiGo believes that it sets the aviation norms.

However, the first and second events may be related to the third one. In 2019, Jet Airways, which was a dominant player, ceased operations. This was a moment of triumph for IndiGo, which was launched in 2006. The two co-founders were Rakesh Gangwal, an aviation sector veteran from the US, and his Indian partner, Rahul Bhatia, who owned InterGlobe Aviation, and other travel-related enterprises. After Jet’s crash-landing, the market share of IndiGo shot up beyond 50 per cent in the domestic market, and it captured the lucrative global routes that were flown by Jet.

At this moment of instant success, dark clouds hovered around IndiGo. Gangwal wrote a scathing letter to the stock market regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India, which accused Bhatia, his partner, of running the airline like a ‘pan ki dukaan,’ or a roadside paan shop. One of the charges related to related-party deals and, according to Gangwal, these inter-company transactions benefited Bhatia’s other businesses, and were harmful to the airline business. He raised issues of corporate ethics, corporate governance, and passengers’ well-being. The matter went to the courts.

Eventually, a court in London did pass an order in favour of Gangwal. By then, however, Bhatia, claimed his partner, had taken control over the airline’s board. Hence, Gangwal decided to exit IndiGo. In 2021. He and his family held 36.5 per cent in the airline; by 2025, the stake dropped below five per cent. Gangwal had sold equity shares worth INR45,000 crore. In retrospect, it seems odd that a co-founder sold the shares of a highly-successful and profitable entity. Possibly, he knew more than what he wrote in the letters, and told the courts. But back then, no one gave it importance, and felt that these steps indicated the moves of an angry co-founder.

Gangwal’s prediction turned out to be correct although it took another crisis in the form of a regulation that required airlines to give pilots and crew adequate rest periods. In the worst phase of the ongoing crisis, IndiGo cancelled almost 50 per cent of its flights on a single day. Going by the December events, and linking them to Gangwal’s allegations, one can possibly conclude that there were issues of mismanagement, operational failures, and corporate governance. Clearly, the pilots and cabin crew were pushed to cut down costs, even as the hiring were slow, and low.

Of course, the Government and regulator have maintained that the strictest-possible action will be taken against the management. Such decisions will set precedents, and lessons for others, who disregard the public interests, and customers’ needs. If one looks at the track records of the Executive, and regulators across sectors, including aviation, one is astonished by their seemingly-lackadaisical attitude. Policy-makers may change laws and regulations, but minimal action is taken against the powerful business entities. The IndiGo crash is a case study for managers, customers, policy-makers, and regulators. The early signs were there, one noticed the red flags, but no one took concrete action until thousands of flights were grounded.

The author has worked for leading media houses, authored two books, and is now Executive Director, C Voter Foundation; views are personal