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The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Friday, December 5, granted IndiGo a temporary, one-time exemption from key night-operation provisions of the new Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) norms until February 10, following days of mass flight cancellations and network-wide disruption. The relaxation came after the airline sought regulatory relief citing operational instability, even as pilot unions and members of the public alleged that the disruption was deliberately engineered to pressure the regulator into diluting the new safety rules.
Under the exemption, the definition of ‘night’ for IndiGo will temporarily stand modified from midnight to 6 am to midnight to 5 am. The airline will also be allowed to operate up to six night landings instead of the two permitted under the revised norms. Additionally, the DGCA has withdrawn a clause that barred airlines from substituting weekly rest periods with leave.
The regulator said the exemptions were being granted solely to facilitate operational stabilisation and must not be construed as a dilution of safety requirements. The relief will be reviewed every fortnight, with IndiGo required to submit regular progress reports on crew utilisation and rostering. The airline has also been directed to submit a full compliance roadmap within 30 days.
The exemptions were granted amid one of the worst operational meltdowns faced by IndiGo, which holds over 60% of India’s domestic aviation market. Over the past week, the airline cancelled thousands of flights due to a shortage of pilots following the implementation of the second phase of the revised FDTL rules from November 1. On Friday alone, over 500 IndiGo flights were cancelled at major airports, with all domestic departures from its Delhi hub suspended till midnight. The airline informed the DGCA that it would cut operations from December 8 and expected full stability only by February 10.
IndiGo later acknowledged that it had “misjudged” its actual crew requirement under the new fatigue rules. As per data shared with the DGCA, the airline now requires 2,422 captains and 2,153 first officers to operate its Airbus A320 fleet under the revised norms, but currently has only 2,357 captains and 2,194 first officers. The DGCA stated that the disruption “arose primarily from misjudgement and planning gaps” in implementing the revised rules and confirmed that IndiGo neither hired adequately nor accelerated training, leaving pilots overstretched through frequent reassignments, longer workdays and extended deadheading.
Even as IndiGo attributed the crisis to planning gaps, pilot unions alleged that the disruption was a pressure tactic to weaken the new fatigue norms. Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) India president Sam Thomas told PTI, “This is not unprecedented. It happens from time to time, especially with IndiGo.” He said airlines tend to delay flights and create mass disruptions whenever regulatory rules are unfavourable to them “to put pressure on the ministry or the DGCA to get their way.” He also said India was “the only country in the world where passenger convenience takes precedence over passenger safety.”
Thomas alleged that despite being given sufficient preparation time, airlines failed to plan adequately. “Sufficient time was given before the rollout of the current FDTL. Despite phased implementation, airlines now claim they don’t have the requisite number of pilots,” he said, warning that the pressure tactics were not new. “This pressure tactic has always been used, but this time DGCA has said it is too old a tactic,” he said.
ALPA India also formally objected to the selective exemptions in a letter to the DGCA, calling them unsafe and commercially motivated. “Despite a clear understanding that no dispensation would be granted, selective relief has now been extended to IndiGo,” the union wrote. It alleged that an “artificial crisis was engineered to exert pressure on the government for commercial gain under the pretext of ‘public inconvenience’.” The body warned that the exemptions dilute fatigue protections and demanded their immediate withdrawal, along with an investigation into IndiGo’s pilot-shortage claims.
Public anger over the disruption has also mirrored these allegations. Comedian Abijit Ganguly wrote, “Anyone with basic brains can figure out what IndiGo did was very intentional. This was almost a planned strike to strongarm the government into giving it what it wants. What people went through doesn’t matter to them.” A Reddit user echoed similar allegations, claiming the crisis was “engineered at the worst possible time” to force regulatory relaxation and comparing it to “the aviation equivalent of a union going on strike.”
The DGCA also took the unprecedented step of directing its own contracted inspectors to operate flights for IndiGo. These inspectors, hired as auditors for five-year terms, are normally barred from flying airline operations.
IndiGo officials met Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu and DGCA chief Faiz Kidwai on Thursday and reiterated that the disruption was due to misjudgement in implementing the new rules, particularly those linked to night operations.
The new FDTL rules were introduced in two phases — June and November — after repeated demands from pilots to address fatigue-related safety risks. While the second phase was delayed by a year to allow airlines to plan manpower, pilot bodies argued that airlines still failed to prepare rosters at least 15 days in advance, as mandated.
With the temporary exemptions now in place until February 10, IndiGo plans to operate on a truncated schedule, cutting nearly 300 daily flights from its usual 2,300-flight network. In an internal note to pilots, IndiGo’s deputy head of flight operations Akshay Mohan wrote, “We are activating a structured operational recovery plan starting 2 am on December 5.”