DGCA forms 4 member committee for review of Indigo’s operational disruption, CEO says normalisation to happen by Dec 10 to 15

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New Delhi: With the Indigo asserting that the services will return to normal in next 10 to 15 days, the Ministry of Civil Aviation that has come under fire from the opposition parties on Friday said that Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has constituted a four member committee headed by a Joint Director General for comprehensive review and assessment of the circumstances leading to operational disruption.

In a statement, the DGCA said that in view of the large scale delays and cancellations reported by Indigo in December 2025, a four member committee has been formed.

The panel members are Joint Director General Sanjay K Bramhane, Deputy Director General Amit Gupta, Senior Flight Operations Inspector Captain Kapil Manglik and Flight Operations Inspector Captain Rampal, the order said.

The committee will submit its findings and recommendations to the DGCA within 15 days to enable necessary regulatory enforcement action and ensure institutional strengthening, the order said.

According to the order, prima facie, the situation indicates deficiencies in internal oversight, operational preparedness, and compliance planning, “warranting an independent examination”.

Meanwhile, the Civil Aviation Ministet K Rammohan Naidu yesterday held a high level review meeting with the MoCA, DGCA, AAI and Indigo’s Senior Management and instructed the airline  to “urgently normalize operations and ensure that minimum inconvenience is caused to the passengers”.

“All requirements regarding passenger facilitation are duly complied,” it said.

The DGCA also said that based on the submission of Indigo, review of operational constraints during the winter season and in order to normalize operations, the aviation watchdog has granted one time exemption on specific requirements of Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) norms to Indigo till February 10, 2026.

“This exemption has been granted solely to facilitate operational stabilization and in no way amounts to dilution of safety requirements. During this period, DGCA would review after every fifteen days, the action taken by M/s Indigo to address the situation including hiring of adequate crew to ensure FDTL compliance,” it said.

DGCA has also issued an appeal to all the pilot associations to extend full cooperation at the moment in view of the large scale demand due to winter holidays and marriage season.

The statement added that the DGCA has issued further relaxations to Indigo to enable pilots who have been deployed elsewhere or are under Designated Examiner (DE) refresher training and standardization checks may be used for flying duties till February 2026.

Currently, DGCA has 12 FOIs on deputation from Indigo and these FOIs have been allowed to take up flying duties to facilitate Indigo pilot scheduling for a week.

All these pilots are A320 type rated and hold valid licenses.

“Also, 12 FOIs from Indigo whose rating and license are current, engaged with DGCA have been released for flight duties and simulator checks to assist M/s Indigo for one week,” it said.

The statement also said that the DGCA has deployed its team at IndiGo’s operational control centers for real time monitoring of flight operations regarding delays/cancellation, passenger facilitation etc. In addition, teams from DGCA regional offices are monitoring the situation at the airports.

Even Indigo CEO Pieter Elbers issued a public apology on Friday evening after more than a thousand flights were cancelled, making it the “most severely impacted day” in terms of cancellations.

“The biggest airline of the country cancelled more than half of its daily number of flights on Friday,” Elbers said, adding that even though the crisis will persist on Saturday, the airline anticipates fewer than 1,000 flight cancellations.

“Full normalisation is expected between December 10 and 15, though IndiGo cautions that recovery will take time due to the scale of operations,” the IndiGo CEO said.

While apologising for the major inconvenience due to delays and cancellations, Elbers said “the situation is a result of various causes”.

He stated that the crisis at IndiGo stems from new regulations that boost pilots’ weekly rest requirements by 12 hours to 48 and allow only two night-time landings per week, down from six.

IndiGo has attributed the mass cancellations to “misjudgment and planning gaps”.

The Indigo CEO also listed three lines of action that the airline will adopt to address the issue which includes customer communication and addressing needs.

“For this, messages have been sent on social media. And just now, a more detailed communication with information, refunds, cancellations and other customer support measures was sent,” he said, adding: “Due to yesterday’s situation, we had customers stranded mostly at the nation’s largest airports. Our focus was for all of them to be able to travel today itself, which will be achieved. For this, we also ask customers whose flights are cancelled not to come to the airports as notifications are sent.”

Explaining the third action, he said that cancellations were made for today to align our crew and planes to be where they need to start tomorrow morning afresh.

“Earlier measures of the last few days, regrettable, have proven not to be enough, but we have decided today to reboot all our systems and schedules, resulting in the highest numbers of cancellations so far, but imperative for progressive improvements starting from tomorrow,” Elbers added.

Chaotic scenes were witnessed at several of the airports across the country as more than 10,000 passengers were stranded due to flight cancellations.