Aboard IndiGo’s Ambitious Wax Wings
Is the monopoly player in Indian airspace the new Icarus in the making?
In the Indian airspace, the last couple of weeks have been crazy. The queen of the airline clique, IndiGo, left all major Indian airports in a chokehold of denial. No pilots, no flights, no service. Soon, the ports were flooded by seas of people stranded and unable to reach their destinations for hours on end, much like Odysseus in Ogygia.
Except, unlike Ogygia, there was no love, care, or resources to assist these travellers’ purgatorial incarceration. All they found themselves was IndiGo’s pledge of inhospitable hospitability.
The airline was the cause of chaos. But the people paid the price. That’s a horrible parallel, even when used against the backdrop of Illian and Odyssean epics.
Let’s try to reframe this whole event, then, shall we? We’ll stick to the Greek mythos and turn our attention to a celebrated character who flew too close to the Sun.
The Labyrinth of Limitations
Flying is, without any doubt, no child’s play.
Ever since the Orville brothers demonstrated their biplane’s limited flight, human engineering and creativity have only taken us upward into the sky and faster across it.
But we’ve been met with a challenge. Our passenger flights can’t break the sonic barrier and go supersonic (yet—NASA might be onto something, but a consumer application will still take years to materialise) due to safety considerations (read: sonic boom and Concorde’s last flight).
Passenger flights, therefore, restrict their speed, which stretches the domestic and globetrotting (globecruising?) times. Faster than road travel, no doubt, but not fast enough.
Which means if your flight is spanning faraway countries and continents at subsonic speeds, it needs to take breaks for refuelling and switch up the pilots so that the flight crew is well-rested and alert.
It all makes sense. Overwork never did anyone any good. But when did the human condition ever come in the way of corporate greed?
That’s where our Icarus, I mean IndiGo, comes into play. Ambitious (even though airlines are generally slim on the profits side) to grow into a big player, it rapidly chalked up and spread its wings across India’s many airports. With cheaper fares, clever public-conscious ads, and better (questionable now) customer experience, it quickly found its way to the big leagues.
Crowned at the top, with profitability under its wings, IndiGo became the dominant player in the Indian airspace. A monopoly. And we all know what monopolies do.
Planes have fuel and speed limits. Humans have operational limits. Everything requires a rest. Barring, of course, human greed. It’s the voracious black hole, only a smidge of Sagittarius A* yet with more appetite. Money comes? Money should keep coming. To hell with everything else.
And so began a downfall.
Indian pilots were made hamsters of the airspace wheel, forced to tire themselves around labyrinthine sky lanes. Their compensation? Didn’t budge. Salaries went stagnant for a decade. No rest for the very people on whom civilian lives depend.
This was made worse by the current Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL): a set of guidelines dictating how long a pilot is on duty, hours spent in flight, night operation windows, and rest hours, including minimum off-duty time every week. The old norms were just . . . too much:
Ten hours of flight time with 13 hours of duty period (for two-pilot operations)
Night time limited to a five-hour band of 00:00—05:00
Six landings at night in a single duty period, with more workload due to shorter night time window
Minimum weekly off set at 36 hours, with two local nights
Combined with more red-eye operations (because night is only five hours) and all this translates to more flight operations at the risk of fatigued pilots. Will a civilian ever agree to board a flight where the pilot is overworked? Clearly not.
And that’s why the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) decided to step in. Think of them as the administration of Crete monitoring the inflow into the infamous labyrinth (air traffic). To keep the maze functional and fully operational, limits need to be imposed for the betterment of everyone.
So, they focused on fatigue management. Here’s a rundown of the tightened rules:
A maximum of 8 hours of flight time with 10 hours of duty (for two-pilot operations)
Night time band is of six hours: 00:00—06:00
A maximum of two landings at night
A minimum weekly rest of 48 hours; two local nights. But if a pilot was on duty for more than three nights in a week (seven days), rest time increases to 60
Because of this, the usual early-morning and late-night shifts will strictly be night duties, themselves capped at two consecutive duties followed by extended rest. DGCA also informed airlines to train crew and staff, as well as maintain and issue fatigue reports.
There’s more depth to the rules, and you can inform yourself with details here and here.
Now, the compass has shifted in favour of the pilots. More rest. More time to breathe. Less fatigue. But fewer operations for the airline. So what? It’s the human lives we prioritise.
Right?
RIGHT?
Flying Too Close to the Sun
December packs a punch for air traffic. It’s the fanfare end of a year with a major note of festival streak that spills over into the next year’s calendar.
For any airline, this season requires a smoother operation and roster management. You know? Check the schedules, manage your pilots’ duty hours and rest time, and not fatigue them to make sure the season goes smooth?
But soon after we bid 2025’s November a farewell, IndiGo started to cancel and delay flights. This peaked with over 1,000 cancellations in a single day. A minotaur-sized headache for passengers left nowhere to go.
As backlash began to pile up, the airline’s top brass put up a brave face and decided to offer their version of events. Here’s what the CEO had to say in the official apology:
Like a cog-work, with the bells and whistles of a Nehru coat. But there’s no regret or shame in those eyes.
Apology accepted?
Absolutely not. Hell continues to break loose, and if you get a newspaper (print or digital) or get your news fix from social media, the outrage should be licking the gorilla glasses of your smartphone screens.
IndiGo, of course, does not back down from its official position. As if there were a rapid-onset-flight-cancellation virus that took over their systems and made pilots unavailable. That is, until you find out that there was something sinister brewing under the airline’s fuselage.
On December 6, Mumbai Mirror came forward with a cover story that presented a completely different picture. Here’s a quote from the story:
“Your cancelled and delayed flight is NOT our fault,” a senior IndiGo captain said. “People and media are blaming us. We are sitting ready, available, legal to fly — and still flights are cancelled. We are not being assigned. The public has no idea what is happening.” Another senior pilot echoed him, saying, “False narratives are being created saying pilots are on strike. There is no strike. We are available and are not refusing duty. We are waiting for instructions that never come.”
That’s . . . bold.
But it’s not the only thread that helps us navigate the labyrinthine deceit pulled by the airline.
The Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) issued a letter to the DGCA, incriminating IndiGo for stalling pilot and crew recruitment even when they were given a two-year window to prepare for the new rules.
Along with this, an open letter has started making rounds on social media and news sites, originating from within the folds of its employees, that alleges corporate grind, profit-seeking, and employee harassment. A downfall that was, as the letter quotes, years in the making.
You know what this stinks of? Suit interference. They’re playing ragdoll with employees and passengers. Only to arm-twist governing bodies like DGCA into cutting them slack so they can fly more. Profit more. So what if the crew (ground and cabin) and the pilots have to forget their humans and operate with permanent red eyes?
This Icarus of ours is acting more like King Minos. Selfish. Arrogant. Overbearing. Monopolising.
But it is still Icarus.
For what good are the wings that were sealed with waxy promises? In the cloud-lined wet and the Sun-kissed provinces. Yonder took the flight, ‘twas a bird made of metal Not human, never god, it found some chinks to unsettle Out the Minotaur’s maze, it flew high over the seas It had freedom to rule, rolled wings with decrees The warmth from the Sun, too high a price, bare When its wax thawed, the bird lost the rudder-fare.
IndiGo flew high. Its swell swept the swine of the airline swatch. Whether it is too big to fail or if it becomes yet another grave of corporate greed, only time will tell.
What I can definitely say with conviction is that it will be you and I—the common man—who will pay the price of its flight, fight, and freedom.
Either with money or with blood.
