When IndiGo collapsed: India’s aviation sector exposed
The extreme fragility of India’s aviation sector stands exposed in the chaos that has enveloped IndiGo Airlines. Was the total collapse of Indigo an unforeseen breakdown or a deliberate sabotage?
IndiGo operates a large fleet of over 400 aircraft, supporting over 2,300 daily flights and connecting numerous domestic and international destinations. An estimated 37,000 employees are in its workforce. Enjoying an absolute majority market share, it was plundering helpless passengers by labelling itself as a “Budget Airline”. There is no legal definition of what is a “Budget Airline” but commercially, a budget airline (or Low-Cost Carrier/ LCC) is defined by its business model: flexi fares that keep escalating every hour, surge pricing during weekends and holidays, charging extra for food, seat selection, skewed refund rules favouring the airline, and cancelled tickets being sold at exorbitant rates. But Indigo commanded a brute 63% of the domestic market share, as there was hardly any competition in the skies. Despite favourable monopolistic climate, Indigo for the quarter ending Sep 2025, posted a Net Loss of INR.2,614 crores. Compare this to the previous quarter (June 2025), where they had a profit of INR.2,727 crores. The airline has swung from a healthy profit to a massive loss very quickly. Such unexplained see-saw performance is conveniently neither probed nor questioned by the government!
A directive was issued by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), which is the regulatory body in the field of Civil Aviation, primarily dealing with safety issues, fixing Flight Duty Time Limitations (FTDL) for pilots on May 31st, 2024. The full implementation of new DGCA FDTL rules was mandated from December 2025, stipulating increased weekly rest (48 hours) and strict caps on night duties, in the interests of overall safety, of crew and passengers.
Typical of India’s generalist bureaucracy, dominated by the IAS, it never cared to check what IndiGo was doing for the last 18 months to implement the FTDL order. When the deadline for implementation of the order became due, IndiGo responded with a stage-managed collapse of all air services.
December 2025 marks the beginning of the annual holiday season, vacations, international tourist arrivals, and innumerable festivals. Indigo chose the appropriate time to flex its muscles. More than 2000 flights were cancelled in a jiffy, ensuring that thousands of passengers were stranded across India. Other assorted pygmy airlines like Air India and Akasa Air jacked up rates to demand exorbitant fares from helpless passengers. Hotels, taxis, and mobile app-based rides all went on a looting spree that left India astounded, shocked, and outraged.
Was this a well-planned sabotage by IndiGo, or did it involve participation by foreign intelligence agencies? Russian President Vladimir Putin was by coincidence in India when IndiGo’s aerial strike crippled the nation. Pieter Elbers is a Dutch airline executive who has been the CEO of IndiGo since 2022. The Netherlands has a strong, adversarial stance against Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine, imposing sanctions, cutting ties, and providing extensive military, financial, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. Is there a foreign hand in this plot, especially that of NATO? Was there an Indian intelligence failure in not getting any information about such a massive destabilization involving over 2000 flights?
Like the Ozone hole over Antarctica, India just developed an IndiGo hole over its skies. Foreign intelligence agencies must be keenly studying and probing this incident to decipher how a single private passenger airline crippled a nation, and hoodwinked many intelligence agencies, which have a strong presence in every airport in India. The CISF, Customs Air Intelligence, DRI, and Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) have a very strong presence at many airports, though not in their regular mandate, but even they were caught unawares by the speed and alacrity of IndiGo’s tour de force.
The government needs to order a full-fledged probe into this ‘December IndiGo air-show 2025’, as well as the apparent intelligence failure, and whether NATO-Netherlands involvement connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit, point to an international conspiracy of unknown dimensions and objectives.
Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
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