New Delhi: What happened inside India’s busiest airline over the first week of December did not look like a routine operational lapse. People inside the system described it as a breakdown that had been building for months, waiting for one spark to turn it into a full-blown emergency.
Several pilots, aviation staffers and industry watchers said privately that what unfolded was not simply a scheduling issue. They believed the airline had walked straight into a storm it had created for itself.
One pilot, who has worked in the industry for nearly a decade, explained that he had never seen such a collapse. He said that the airline was now suffering because of choices it had made, not because of any external shock.
Another pilot with around five thousand hours of flying experience, who has been with the company for three years, said the days before the cancellations felt like a time when everyday routines suddenly started to feel more difficult.
He recalled how, on December 2, simple pre-flight tasks at the Delhi airport took nearly twice as long as they normally did. Processes that usually wrapped up in half an hour stretched past an hour without explanation.
By December 6, the numbers told the story. More than 2,000 flights had been cancelled across multiple routes. Airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kolkata saw commuters stranded for hours. Families sat on floors, passengers argued with airline staff and videos of chaos spread across social media.
People familiar with the inside workings of the airline said two forces contributed to the collapse: first was the company’s failure to get ahead of new working-hour requirements for pilots (guidelines that every airline had known about since early 2024), second was the aviation regulator, which allowed the rule rollout to drift and did not step in early enough when signs of strain became obvious.
Several senior captains said the new fatigue-management rules had already been in place since November 1 that made it hard for them to understand why the system buckled a full month later.
One pilot said the roster had been running on the updated norms from day one. Pilots were getting the mandated rest that was “36 hours instead of 48”. He could not understand why, despite following those numbers, the system suddenly slipped on December 3.
A trainee pilot also said he had seen no surprise element in the new guidelines. The problem, in his view, was the airline’s slow hiring process and the rising number of pilots who have been leaving for higher-paying positions abroad.
December, he explained, is when many pilots clear their pending annual leave, leaving even fewer hands available. He added that many pilots believed the regulations were reasonable. “FDTL rules are correct,” he said, explaining that the airline was struggling mainly because it had been operating continuously with a limited crew base.
During the worst days of the crisis, the airline’s on-time performance crashed. On December 5, less than four out of every hundred flights (just 3.7%) took off as scheduled. Other airlines were operating far more smoothly that day, with the Akasa at 79%, the Alliance Air at 73% and the Air India Express at 66.3%.
A senior official in a pilots’ association, who has long raised concerns around safety and fatigue, questioned why the new rules triggered such disruption only after 35 days. He argued that the regulator should have intervened earlier, especially when November itself had seen more than a thousand cancellations.
He pointed out that officials could easily check crew logs to determine whether pilots and cabin staff had been reporting on time. He insisted that the system was “not transparent”, making it difficult for passengers and officials to understand what the real trigger was.
A former airline executive went a step further. In his assessment, the airline alone was responsible for the mess because it had failed to build a workforce large enough to operate under the new rules. He said the company had assumed it could persuade the regulator to delay implementation and was unprepared for the day the guidelines actually became binding.
He said that December is also when many pilots hit their maximum annual flying limits of 1,000 hours, leaving the airline with little flexibility.
Some experts felt the regulator should have acted much earlier. They said the regulator knew the airline had cancelled more than 1,200 flights in November and should have issued a formal notice. Instead, the situation was allowed to deteriorate until the problem grew too large to contain.
Industry voices also pointed out that other airlines adjusted their crew planning without major trouble. With more than 60 percent of India’s aviation market under its control, the airline had become accustomed to operating with extremely tight cost structures. This model brought profits, insiders said, but it left little room for operational shocks.
A veteran pilot union leader argued that the airline had dragged its feet on compliance even after a court ruling. According to him, the new norms had already been partially implemented in July without any noticeable disruption, which made the December crisis even harder to justify.
Some aviation specialists argued that the regulator’s own staffing limitations played a role. They pointed out that auditing an airline of this size with current manpower levels was impossible within a routine three-day audit window.
The crisis eventually forced the government to step in. Ticket prices on several routes had soared to Rs 60,000, prompting the Ministry of Civil Aviation to impose a temporary fare cap on affected sectors. Officials said they were exercising their authority to ensure “reasonable and fair pricing” until operations stabilised.
Cabinet-level officials also announced an inquiry into the airline’s conduct, saying that no other carrier faced similar trouble despite operating under the same rules. The ministry directed the airline to complete refunds for all affected passengers by the evening of December 7, warning that delays would invite penalties.
On the ground, the scenes were raw and chaotic. Stacks of unclaimed luggage sat at multiple airports. Some passengers had slept on terminal floors for nights. Others broke down in frustration as they struggled to reach their destinations. People waiting at the Bengaluru airport filmed moments of despair, capturing travellers in tears as another round of cancellations was announced.
What began as a policy change meant to improve pilot rest ended with India witnessing one of its largest aviation disruptions in years. Those inside the industry say the full truth of how the system crumbled will come out only when the investigation concludes.
For now, passengers remember the long hours, the unanswered questions and the feeling of being stranded inside a system that was supposed to keep them moving.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: ZEE News
