Being the biggest and most successful in any area of activity comes with a cost and IndiGo’s plight by all available data seems worse than others. Hit by the recent change in duty flight timing limitations, India’s largest airline IndiGo cancelled several flights through the month of November with matters reaching a head on December 3 when 12% of the airline’s total daily flights of 2200 were cancelled . This affected close to 50,000 passengers across airports. What upset the fliers above all is that most of the cancellations were last minute and unplanned, often learnt of when the passenger was either at the airport or enroute. On time figures for December 2nd that came in show that IndiGo saw the sharpest slippage in on time to 35%, while the Air India, Akasa and Air India Express recorded 67%, 73% and 79% respectively.

Pilot unions have been quick to ascribe the blame on all the airlines, with the spotlight on IndiGo as the biggie. A letter from one union argues that the “lag in planning” is behind this disruption and that despite sufficient time being accorded, most airlines started preparing rather late, failing to properly adjust crew rosters 15 days in advance as required. “This suggests an initial managerial underestimation or delay in the strategic planning”. It further argues that the chaos created might in fact be an “arm twisting tactic” to further delay implementation of the new norms. They argue that the airlines remain excessively driven by commercial considerations at the cost of virtually all else and are of the view that the airlines were hoping or even banking on being able to delay the full implementation — on the grounds that they were not adequately prepared — until they were ready for it but court directives ensured that this didn’t happen.

A statement issued by IndiGo, which has seen the maximum disruption, said that a “multitude of unforeseen operational challenges including minor technology glitches, schedule changes linked to the winter season, adverse weather conditions, increased congestion in the aviation system and the implementation of updated crew rostering rules (Flight Duty Time Limitations) had a negative compounding impact on our operations in a way that was not feasible to be anticipated”. The airline maintained that it had initiated calibrated adjustments to its schedules that would remain in place for the next 48 hours, in an attempt to normalise operations.

Industry experts and company insiders say that while it was true that Indigo’s delays and cancellations due to sheer size tend to get magnified (translating into a bigger pain point for all stakeholders), there was a miscalculation internally by the operations control team on the head count that would be required post the new norms and that an attempt to rotate the crew better closer to the time had in fact backfired. This severely compounded all the other smaller problems that hit at the same time. A query to the airline’s CEO on this remained unanswered till this went to press.

The fact that the problem was more at IndiGo’s door than the rest is evident since Air India has seen 95 total cancellations during November till this went to press, an almost negligible cancellation rate of 0.4%, which makes it quite apparent that IndiGo has faltered since the new rules apply to all players equally.

However, fliers can be rest assured that this will be a temporary blip as the airline is likely to readjust and operate on a lighter schedule since it cannot hire the numbers required overnight even if it wanted. Till then, aggrieved passengers can take some consolation from the fact that they have better rested pilots and safer skies : better late than never.