Industry pushback
The new FDTL rules made 22 changes, including enhancing the weekly rest for pilots from 36 to 48 hours, capping their daily night landings at two (down from six), extending ‘night’ hours to 6 am (instead of the previous 5 am), and mandating a Fatigue Risk Management System (FRMS) that allowed pilots to decline flights due to exhaustion, without inviting a penalty. Airlines were asked to log fatigue reports quarterly.
By March last year, the entire industry raised concerns about the operational impact of these changes. They argued that the transition period was too short. Through late 2024, carriers operated under the older framework despite regulatory prodding to expand pilot recruitment and adjust rosters.
A senior executive of a leading airline told this newspaper, “Any private company runs to make profits. Implementing these rules would force us to hire more pilots to run the same number of aircraft. We are speaking of huge salaries here and it will dent the profits to some extent.” As per a rough estimate, each airline needed to hire 20% more pilots for total compliance with the new rules.
The final push for FDTL came from the Delhi High Court, which on April 1, 2025 asked the DGCA to submit the dates for operationalising the new roster. That was when the regulator set the June 1 date for the first phase of the FDTL rollout and November 1 for the second phase.
Deadly December
The IndiGo crisis slowly began snowballing from late November. Of the 403 aircraft approved by the regulator, only 339–344 were operational by November-end. On December 1, when FDTL’s phase 2 kicked in, IndiGo was unable to implement the new roster system, resulting in an unprecedented chaos affecting approximately 11 lakh fliers over a period of a week. By December 3-4, hundreds of flights were affected daily, with on-time performance dropping sharply to 8.5-19.7%.
The mess peaked on December 5, when approximately 1,600 flights were cancelled nationwide, including all departures from Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport until midnight. Major hubs like Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai faced severe disruptions, resulting in chaotic airport scenes with stranded passengers and unclaimed baggage. Disruptions continued on December 6 with 850-1,000 cancellations, though IndiGo operated around 1,500 flights. On December 7, cancellations came down to about 650, with operations rising to 1,650 flights and on-time performance improving to 75%. However, cancellations persisted into the second week, with hundreds affected on December 8-11, tapering off progressively.
