IndiGo crisis: Could the chaos have been prevented? | Ex-AirAsia CFO explains

The Federal spoke to Vijay Gopalan, former CFO of AirAsia India, on the chaos that left thousands of IndiGo passengers stranded for days, what went wrong with the airline’s operations, and why India’s aviation structure leaves travellers with few real choices.

Why were passengers left stranded for days? Could IndiGo have handled this better?

Could it have been handled better? One hundred per cent it could have been handled better. It should have been handled better.

Flight cancellations happen with most airlines. It is not new, and it often happens because of operational reasons, as airlines keep saying. But when cancellations at this scale are happening and so many passengers are left stranded, it definitely should have been handled better.

Also Read: IndiGo flight cancellations ‘credit negative’, says Moody’s; slams planning lapses

Communication could have been better. I am quite sure they knew much earlier that they were going to hit this roadblock. They should have had contingencies in place.

What basic rights do passengers have when flights are cancelled or delayed? Can they claim compensation for stay at hotels, missed weddings, medical appointments, or exams?

Could there be better compensation? The answer always is yes. Can something be better? It definitely can be better. But the rights for flyers in India are very, very restricted.

Yes, you do have regulations, but the enforceability is not great. If you have a missed wedding or reception, like the reel I saw where the bride and groom had to do it online because they could not travel, what happens to the reception expenses they incurred? I do not think that is going to get covered by civil aviation regulations.

Those kinds of losses are going to be a very separate mandate. You will have to move consumer courts, if at all you want to pursue them.

Pilot fatigue rules apply to all airlines. Why is IndiGo the only one facing cancellations at this scale?

Anything I say at this point is going to be speculation, so I want to stay away from speculating without knowing the full facts.

What I will say is that IndiGo’s scale is massive. They meet about 70 per cent of the country’s airline demand. So even if Akasa Air or SpiceJet had similar issues, the sheer scale of IndiGo can magnify the impact.

Also Read: 'Will take strict action against IndiGo', says Aviation Minister

Coupled with that, as I have said in my video, I think they may have been lackadaisical or nonchalant about complying with certain regulations. It need not necessarily be only the Flight Duty Limitation-related issues. Parallel to this, there is also an Airbus software upgrade that Airbus has called for. I do not know how much that has contributed to this particular issue.

So it could be a multitude of factors. But in IndiGo’s case, I think they probably took it a lot lighter than they should have.

Given exemptions to pilot rest rules, are IndiGo flights safe to fly right now?

This is something I want to make very clear: Indian air safety is on par with international standards. No flyer should worry about safety.

We have had an Air India crash, which was a very unfortunate incident. But I do not think that is reason enough to cast aspersions on our country’s air safety framework.

To put the FDL regulations in context, they are quite complicated, but let me take a simple example. We are talking about 36 hours of continuous rest being moved to 48 hours — that is one aspect. Thirty-six hours is pretty much what the UK and Europe have mandated. Surprisingly, US regulations require only 30 hours of continuous rest.

So we have actually gone ahead, much beyond what other countries are following, to ensure our safety standards are paramount. Having worked in the industry, I can say the overall safety framework is fairly solid. I do not think Indian flyers should worry that pilots are getting fatigued and therefore there is a safety risk.

Our existing regulations are on par with international standards. The government was trying to make them even better.

Does India need stronger passenger compensation rules like the EU? And who should be held accountable for this mess – the airline, the regulator, or both?

There are two parts to this. On passenger compensation, it definitely needs to get better in our country.

For instance, if you book a normal fare — and a lot of people do not understand this — the fine print often says cancellation charges are as high as Rs 4,000–5,000 for a Rs 3,000 ticket. That is insane. First of all, consumer education has to be much stronger. When you book a ticket, it needs to be in bold that at a cheaper fare your cancellation charge will be so high and you cannot move it. A lot of people do not understand that.

Secondly, passengers do not understand their civil aviation rights. It is like with our traffic rules — not many people know the exact fine for jumping a signal or going the wrong way. It is all a blur. That is pretty much what is happening with aviation rights.

I think the Ministry of Civil Aviation should take it upon itself to publicise the rights that every flyer has. That education is extremely important.

Also Read: IndiGo cancels 560 flights today; refunds touch Rs 827 cr, 4,500 bags returned

On accountability, of course someone should be held accountable. Where is the doubt? In fact, more than one party should be held accountable. The two primary parties are IndiGo and the government through the DGCA.

Truth be told, accountability has to sit with both, but more so with IndiGo because they are the ones running the airline and they knew these regulations were coming. Whatever the excuses, the planning should have happened much earlier, not after complete mayhem and chaos had broken out. You cannot then say, “We were worried about the regulations.” Come on.

So I would place the majority of the accountability on IndiGo. Having said that, the government could have taken measures to ensure it did not come down to this, especially in a duopoly market. In other industries you have many players. Here you know that one airline controls 70 per cent of the market. I think we left ourselves a bit too exposed.

If IndiGo knew these regulations were coming, why were they so lax?

That is exactly the question the government is asking IndiGo through the show-cause notice now: how did it come down to this?

Honestly, I do not have an answer because it baffles me. Heads will roll. If I were running an airline like this, my head would have rolled. This is 20 years of effort that IndiGo has put into building a brand, all literally quashed in three to four days.

IndiGo over the years has run an extremely reliable airline. That is what they have prided themselves on. I have my own questions about that. A typical Chennai–Delhi flight when Jet Airways was flying used to be 2.5 hours: depart at 7, arrive at 9:30. Today, a Chennai–Delhi flight is shown as 2 hours 55 minutes or 3 hours. There is no point in buffering so much time and then saying, “I have arrived on time.”

Also Read: IndiGo ramps up operations, issues Rs 610 crore in refunds after week-long disruptions

Keeping that aside, while IndiGo has run a reliable airline, I do not think they have been the best in customer service for a very long time. We have seen scuffles between cabin crew and passengers, ground staff and passengers. Other airlines have had issues, but IndiGo’s issues have been way too many.

Given that customer service has not been their focus, my sense as a passenger is that they probably took this a bit too lightly and said, “Yes, we will have an issue for a week, but who else will passengers fly with if not us?” I generally do not like sensationalising or using strong terms, but if this is the attitude, I think it borders on arrogance — which is very unfortunate in an essential industry like civil aviation.

How soon can IndiGo bring in more pilots or fix the situation? What is the way forward now?

First, we need to check if the pilot issue is even real. I saw an open letter from employees saying there were pilots available but they were not rostered. I do not know how true that is.

If that is true, the pilot issue may not be the real problem. But if it is not true and they genuinely have a pilot shortage, then they are going to have trouble getting back to full speed.

Also Read: IndiGo mass cancellations: Where does the buck stop? | Capital Beat

If they have to fully move to the new regulations, they will need many more pilots. I would think that is at least a six-month road map from here.

But since the DGCA has rolled back these regulations, I think we should be able to hit normalcy in about a week.

Should families avoid booking IndiGo flights over the next few weeks?

If families are worried about safety, they should not be. Safety is not the issue. The question is whether the flight will take off on time or at all. That I will leave to individual discretion.

Personally, when people have asked me, I have said: on routes where you do not have a choice, just fly. At the end of the day, IndiGo is under fire right now and they want to come back to normalcy at the earliest. So I will leave it at that.

After all this, why should passengers trust IndiGo again?

Because there is nobody else. Simple.

Take Chennai–Tiruchirappalli. That is my favourite example. I live in Chennai. Chennai–Tiruchy has six to seven flights a day, and every flight is operated only by IndiGo. If I have to travel there and say I don’t trust IndiGo, I have no choice. I cannot fly.

Also Read: IndiGo crisis: Govt caps airfares, not to exceed Rs 18,000

The same is the case with Chennai–Ahmedabad. There are about four direct flights a day, all operated only by IndiGo. If I say I do not trust IndiGo, I cannot travel to Ahmedabad on a direct flight.

You do not have anybody else. That is the biggest problem.

IndiGo has a market share of about 65 per cent. Has its dominance crippled India’s aviation sector?

Without a doubt, yes. This has been the single biggest crippling factor because you do not have other players.

This is not happening only in aviation; I see it in a few other industries as well. Unless you have competition, there is not going to be accountability in a consumer market like this. That is basic economics. We need more players.

Kingfisher folded. Jet Airways folded. Air India almost folded till the Tata group came and bailed it out. SpiceJet has been in trouble. Akasa is a fledgling airline trying to ramp up. We do not have anybody else to fly with.

What is the real solution to this crisis and to India’s aviation structure more broadly?

The solution is not just “we need more players”, although we definitely do. That is a very simplistic response.

Structurally, Indian aviation is not geared to let airlines make profits. On one side you see fares being very high, but do you think airlines are making profits? They are not, because structurally there is so much work to do.

Our taxes on aviation turbine fuel are extremely high. Seventy per cent of the costs are denominated in US dollars. The rupee is constantly depreciating against the dollar, and offline it has been depreciating at a much faster speed. That means costs are inherently becoming higher.

Also Read: IndiGo effect: Domestic airfare shoots up; Kolkata-Mumbai at Rs 90,000

Our pilot training facilities still need to be upgraded. We are the fastest-growing major economy in the world. That should be reflected in the aviation landscape. In developed countries, the aviation landscape is extremely strong.

Today, structurally, we do not reward aviation players. The primary reason is that people still have this perception that air travel is only for the rich and elite. That mindset has to change. It is for the common man today.

Just the way railways are accessible to the common man, aviation should be too — because we need to save time, be more efficient, and have convenience. That mindset has to change, taxes have to reduce, and structurally we have to make aviation a profitable business.

(The content above has been transcribed from video using a fine-tuned AI model. To ensure accuracy, quality, and editorial integrity, we employ a Human-In-The-Loop (HITL) process. While AI assists in creating the initial draft, our experienced editorial team carefully reviews, edits, and refines the content before publication. At The Federal, we combine the efficiency of AI with the expertise of human editors to deliver reliable and insightful journalism.)