IndiGo Flight Crisis Eases After Massive Cancellations, Delhi Airport Updates Passengers
IndiGo crisis eases after government grants emergency night-duty exemption.
Indira Gandhi International Airport in the national capital issued a carefully worded passenger advisory late Friday evening, declaring that IndiGo’s crippled operations are now “steadily resuming and getting back to normalcy” following an unprecedented chaos that saw the airline cancel every domestic departure from Delhi until midnight and over one thousand flights across India in a single day.
The airport authority strongly urged travellers to verify live flight status through the airline’s website or app before leaving home, warning that cascading delays, aircraft repositioning issues, and crew shortages may still trigger last-minute cancellations or extended waiting times at counters and gates for several more days.
IndiGo Chief Executive Officer Pieter Elbers appeared in a sombre video message apologising profusely to lakhs of affected passengers, confirming that December 5 marked the darkest day in the airline’s history with cancellations crossing the thousand mark, and cautiously projecting complete schedule stabilisation only between December 10 and 15 as stranded crews and aircraft are gradually brought back into position.
Also Read: Congress Leaders Pay Tribute to Indira Gandhi on Her 108th Birth Anniversary
Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu openly held IndiGo solely responsible for the nationwide paralysis, stating the carrier displayed shocking “misjudgment and gap in planning” while adapting to the new DGCA flight-duty-time-limitation norms that came into force on November 1, emphasising that every other airline, including Air India and SpiceJet, managed the transition smoothly despite IndiGo commanding almost 63 percent market share.
Facing the prospect of further collapse and mounting public anger in Parliament, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation has handed IndiGo a controversial one-time exemption from stringent night-duty restrictions and weekly-rest calculations until February 10, 2026, a move slammed by pilots’ associations as a dangerous dilution of safety standards even as it offers immediate breathing space to the airline and relief to thousands of still-stranded passengers desperate to reach home.
Also Read: Navi Mumbai Airport Gets New Railway Station, CM Fadnavis Calls It a Special Gift
