India’s largest airline, IndiGo, was forced to scrap 67 domestic services on 25 December after early-morning forecasts warned of heavy fog, rain and cross-winds in several cities. The carrier said 63 flights were pulled pre-emptively for weather-related safety reasons, while four additional sectors were shelved because of knock-on crew-rostering issues. Key airports hit included Agartala, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Varanasi and Bengaluru, with the bulk of cancellations clustered on the lucrative north-India corridor where winter fog routinely cripples visibility.
Although the absolute number is a fraction of IndiGo’s 1,900-plus daily rotations, the timing is painful. Christmas week is peak travel season for corporate flyers returning from year-end meetings, expatriates on home leave and inbound tourists. Passengers holding onward connections to Gulf, ASEAN and Europe complained of missed links and hefty re-ticketing costs, as alternative seats sold out within hours. Airport authorities deployed additional customer-service volunteers, but long queues formed at rebooking desks in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.
![IndiGo Cancels 67 Flights Across India as Weather Disruptions Continue]()
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has kept IndiGo under “enhanced surveillance” since an unprecedented meltdown on 5 December, when crew-roster mismatches cascaded into 1,000+ cancellations in a single day. The regulator wants a detailed root-cause analysis of Tuesday’s cuts to ensure they were strictly weather-driven and not another manpower shortfall. Analysts say the scrutiny could translate into closer monitoring of IndiGo’s newly expanded red-eye schedule and its compliance with revised Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) that kicked in last month.
For mobility managers, the lesson is two-fold: build weather buffers into Q4 travel and keep contingency carriers in travel-policy inventories. Companies with critical staff moves this week are advising travellers to shift to early-morning CAT-III-equipped flights or consider rail for short-haul sectors such as Delhi-Chandigarh. Travel-risk teams are also updating crisis-response trees to reflect DGCA’s willingness to intervene quickly when operational resilience falters.
Although the absolute number is a fraction of IndiGo’s 1,900-plus daily rotations, the timing is painful. Christmas week is peak travel season for corporate flyers returning from year-end meetings, expatriates on home leave and inbound tourists. Passengers holding onward connections to Gulf, ASEAN and Europe complained of missed links and hefty re-ticketing costs, as alternative seats sold out within hours. Airport authorities deployed additional customer-service volunteers, but long queues formed at rebooking desks in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has kept IndiGo under “enhanced surveillance” since an unprecedented meltdown on 5 December, when crew-roster mismatches cascaded into 1,000+ cancellations in a single day. The regulator wants a detailed root-cause analysis of Tuesday’s cuts to ensure they were strictly weather-driven and not another manpower shortfall. Analysts say the scrutiny could translate into closer monitoring of IndiGo’s newly expanded red-eye schedule and its compliance with revised Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) that kicked in last month.
For mobility managers, the lesson is two-fold: build weather buffers into Q4 travel and keep contingency carriers in travel-policy inventories. Companies with critical staff moves this week are advising travellers to shift to early-morning CAT-III-equipped flights or consider rail for short-haul sectors such as Delhi-Chandigarh. Travel-risk teams are also updating crisis-response trees to reflect DGCA’s willingness to intervene quickly when operational resilience falters.
Source: The Times of India
