IndiGo disruptions continue: 117 flights cancelled in Mumbai, 106 in Delhi, 66 in Hyderabad
The airline also cancelled around 12 arrivals and 13 departures in Jaipur and 24 arrivals and 35 departures in Ahmedabad, officials said
As IndiGo flight cancellations and delays continued across the country on Saturday, affecting major airports in Delhi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad.
Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport saw 106 flights cancelled till noon, including 54 departures and 52 arrivals. Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport recorded 117 cancellations (63 departures and 54 arrivals), while Hyderabad reported 66 cancellations (43 departures and 23 arrivals).
The airline also cancelled around 12 arrivals and 13 departures in Jaipur and 24 arrivals and 35 departures in Ahmedabad, officials said.
This has IndiGo cancelled 1,000 flights on Friday, triggering chaos at airports across the country and leaving thousands of passengers stranded. On social media, passengers shared videos of groups of people raising slogans against the airline as anger continued to spread among commuters
While the chaos peaked this week, the storm was building up through November, when the airline cancelled , on average, over 25 flights a day on account of its inability to meet the new norms.
The airline, which commands 60% of India’s domestic market, has approximately cancelled 1,600 flights since Tuesday, when the crisis erupted into public view.
IndiGo’s chief executive Pieter Elbers admitted in a video message to customers that “earlier measures of the last few days have proven not to be enough”. “So we decided today for a reboot of all our systems and schedules, resulting in the highest number of cancellations so far, but imperative for progressive improvements starting tomorrow onwards,” Elbers said, adding that the airline expects cancellations to fall below 1,000 on Saturday.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Friday exempted Indigo’s Airbus A320 fleet from certain rules on pilot duty hours at night, after a representation from the airline a day earlier. It also allowed Indigo to call back pilots deputed elsewhere for flying duties. Separately, it withdrew a rule that prevented airlines from counting pilot leave as weekly rest to meet flying duty norms.
The relaxation, according to aviation regulator DGCA, was prompted by representations from IndiGo citing “severe operational disruptions, including massive flight cancellations/delays and consequential passenger inconvenience.” The airline told the regulator that the disruption had “primarily arisen due to the implementation of Phase-II of the revised FDTL Civil Aviation Requirements… .”
The Airline Pilots Association of India, which represents over 6,000 pilots, expressed “profound concern” over what it called “selective dispensations” to IndiGo, warning that the exemption “gravely compromised the safety of the flying public” and undermined the spirit of the Flight Duty Time Limitations.
The regulator issued an appeal to all pilot associations “to extend full cooperation at the moment in view of the large scale demand due to winter holidays and marriage season”.
Meanwhile, airfares across Indian carriers surged to as much as ten times their usual rates on Friday following IndiGo’s mass cancellation of over 1,000 flights, with round-trip tickets on major routes crossing ₹80,000– ₹90,000 as passengers scrambled for limited seats on rival services.
A Delhi-Mumbai return ticket reached ₹93,000, while return fares to Bengaluru touched ₹92,000, Kolkata ₹94,000 and Chennai ₹80,000—compared to typical same-day economy round-trip fares of ₹20,000- ₹25,000 on these routes. Even last-minute bookings under normal circumstances rarely exceed ₹30,000. By Friday evening, most flights were sold out, leaving passengers with little choice but to pay highly inflated fares or postpone travel.
