IndiGo, India's Largest Airline, Melts Down, Over New Pilot Fatigue Rules

What do I see? What I see day in and day out. Senior management never wanting to get into the nitty gritty of running a company and thinking AI is going to be the savior. Didn't anyone sit down and plan out for longer pilot rest requirements?

AI gonna save the day... no, clearly, Air India is not going to save IndiGo... *wink*

Welcome to India and gross mismanagement which is a norm! Why is anyone even surprised

India fatigue

Apparently this was intentional. Due to Indigo's large market share and effect of cancellations, the new safety guideline has been postponed. Pretty pathetic and I hope they get heavily fined.

They carry 65% of domestic passengers and since they partner with a number of airlines it means missing onward connections so it’s going to cost them a fortune.

Whilst they apologised to passengers, they failed to apologise to all the front line staff who had to put up with the mess and abuse.

If I didn’t want to adopt a new rule and I controlled 65% of the market, and I knew passenger chaos would result in a relaxation of said rule…. then it’s plausible that I might just decide to not implement the rule and let the authorities deal with it in hopes that the new rule gets waived.
One hell of a risky bet to take though, so it’s not something I would feel comfortable doing.

If I didn’t want to adopt a new rule and I controlled 65% of the market, and I knew passenger chaos would result in a relaxation of said rule…. then it’s plausible that I might just decide to not implement the rule and let the authorities deal with it in hopes that the new rule gets waived.
One hell of a risky bet to take though, so it’s not something I would feel comfortable doing.

lndigo deserves this and more than this
they were having unhealthy competition against AI, spicejet
they antogonized govt by leasing aircraft from turkish airlines
whose president was anti india god punished them
thanks now their market share will drop substantially and
director general of civil aviation will slap the with hefty fine
for their failure to implement new crew duty time limitation
cdtl rules. and the airlines who collected excessive fares from
public (grey market in india it is called black market) will also be
fined heavily i will also write to DGCA new delhi about this
unfair business practices.

Who was God punishing when he crashed the Air India 787?

This is unrelated to the post, but as someone who's been on a very long hiatus from this blog, what happened to the other contributers to OMAAT such as Tiffany/Travis etc?

Any Good News out of India lately?

I think India has a problem

The CEO of Indigo is Dutch (former CEO of KLM).

It is not just about planning, if they have operated to the letter of the law right exactly at the border line. Then a reduction of the number of night flights and night flying hours per pilot plus an increase in rest time will create a need for more pilots. And it does take time to ramp up the number of pilots.

As an LCC they probably scheduled to the max of the law to reduce operating expenses.

Let’s see… ‘Putin, Modi agree to expand and widen India-Russia trade, strengthen friendship…’ oh, so, no, there’s no Good News out of India lately. Sorry. Normally I wouldn’t disparage an entire country, but, in this case… Oof. Yikes. C’mon guys. That’s awful. Eww.

If they don’t hand out delft blue houses, it doesn’t count

Hi all,

I spent many years working in the crew scheduling department of a major airline in Brazil and one of my team’s core responsibilities was partnering with our crew scheduling software vendors to update the system whenever new fatigue regulations were introduced. Beyond adjusting the technology, we also had to model the operational impact of these rules on future schedules to ensure we would have enough qualified crew available.

This was never a simple process. Implementing new fatigue standards required extensive system changes, detailed scenario analyses, and quite often the hiring and training of additional pilots. And as many of you know, recruiting and qualifying new flight crew takes considerable time. In my experience, if new fatigue regulations demand increased staffing, you need at least a one year runway to adjust systems, run simulations, assess risk, and bring additional pilots onboard.

With that in mind, if regulators in India announced new fatigue measures without providing a sufficient transition period for carriers to perform all of the above, a disruption of this magnitude was not just foreseeable, it was inevitable. It is likely that no comprehensive trial run of the schedule was performed under the new rules or that crew capacity planning never fully incorporated the regulatory changes.

Interestingly, I stepped into the role of manager for crew scheduling systems and crew capacity planning at my former airline precisely during a similar meltdown caused by inadequate long term crew planning. At the time I was working as a project manager and was tasked with leading the root cause analysis to understand exactly how and why the breakdown occurred.

Great insight, thanks for the perspective Bruno.

DGCA said it gave Airlines between 1-1.5yrs to implement the changes.
That's more than enough time I believe to adjust.
If they weren't able to hire enough pilots, they could have reduced operations slightly to balance out till they have the required crew to scale back up.

This is a classic case of being penny wise but pound foolish..

IndiGo was given ample time to adjust their flights / crew rostering ahead of the new FDTL regulations which of course meant having additional pilots and crew..

And having more pilots and crew and more flights would obviously lead to increased costs..

But IndiGo, in an attempt to avoid taking on this cost tried to kick the can down the road as much as they could..

However, now with the chaos that has happened, it has resulted in greater costs / reputational damage to the airline which is still ongoing and reeling from..

Perhaps, if IndiGo actually had made additional arrangements with an increase in their costs / expenditure, we would not be having this situation in the 1st place..

The cost of performing additional flights and crews is comparatively lesser compared to the cost of cancelling thousands of flights (including connecting flights) and refunds and not to say about the damage to their reputation and brand.

So in other words, IndiGo deserves to suffer because it isn't Hindutva Airlines. Presumably you also work for SpiceJet, which has been a complete joke for years.

The crews were too busy throwing (and eating!) poop at each other.

This is CRIMINAL CORRUPTION.

Indian poop throwing festival?

@Natarajan Sivsubramanian
You are a joke and a good example of the corrupt and ill informed #godiMedia. Your PM Modi is a criminal.

Go throw some more poop.

This is the result of systemic corruption, and something India brought onto itself
- India is a country that gives full support to Israel, creates bogus accounts to spout Zionist propaganda.
- India pretends to be an ally of the west, but is duplicitous with Putin
- India is also the financial scam capital of the world. Thousands of YouTube videos catching such scammers out.

Sometimes countries need pain to occur for a reset to happen.

Most pro Zionist accounts are based in India too

"India is a country that gives full support to Israel, creates bogus accounts to spout Zionist propaganda."

Well, at least there's something good about India. Hopefully they'll supply Israel with some weapons to get rid of more Palestinians, especially the future terrorists.

Come back from the grave, Epstein? You are a disgusting person to wish death on children "especially the future terrorists"

Indigo got some rules relief to help get their operation back on track but the real reason why this is such a big deal is because India allowed Indigo to become so large which itself is because Air India is so much smaller than it should be because it has been so badly run for so long.
the tier of LCCs and ULCCs below Indigo has not been as successful as Indigo is.

Indigo needs to adapt to higher labor standards but the implementation of these new rules is going to have to take time and India needs to push Indigo to get it right.

Do you have evidence of this disgusting comment or are you just making stuff up?

@Jessica what the actual F are you on about?