The December cascade of cancellations at IndiGo revealed how safety regulation, lean airline operations, and market concentration can together paralyse a nation’s air-travel grid. For regulators, airlines, and airport operators especially in the African continent, there are lessons to learn.
In early December 2025, India’s aviation network faced chaos as IndiGo, the country’s largest airline, struggled to comply with stricter crew-rest rules. Thousands of flights were cancelled or delayed, turning airports into makeshift camps and prompting emergency government measures. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had tightened flight duty time limitations to curb fatigue, mandating longer weekly rests at home bases, extending night-duty windows, and restricting night landings. A key clause barring leave from counting as rest severely reduced scheduling flexibility, triggering crew shortages. Amid soaring cancellations, authorities imposed fare caps, added trains, and rolled back the clause — highlighting safety versus operational continuity tensions.
IndiGo’s lean model — built on high utilization and tight turnarounds — proved brittle under new rest rules, scattering pilots and causing cascading delays. With IndiGo controlling two-thirds of India’s domestic market and rivals weakened, alternatives were scarce. This concentration makes the network fragile, raising concerns about a system “too big to fail, too big to tame.”
Now here is the impact on passenger experience: Inside terminals, scenes were familiar from crises elsewhere: long queues, frayed tempers, missed weddings and interviews, families camped on the floor. Staff absorbed the brunt of anger, often with limited information to provide. The acute distress is a reminder that safety and efficiency must coexist with passenger resilience — the ability of the system to protect customers from shocks through communication, re-accommodation, and cross-modal relief (rails and buses). In India, emergency rail capacity and fare caps were sensible triage, but they were reactive, not preventive.
Lessons come out from this recent incident that requires attention of all aviators: Safety mandates must be phased with operational pilots in mind. Rather than flipping multiple constraints at once, regulators should sequence changes and require proof-of-capacity (reserve crews, simulator slots, training timelines) before each phase. Stress-testing policies with real data from airline rosters — and rehearsing “day one” scenarios — can uncover bottlenecks early.
Also, a healthy system expects shocks and plans for rerouting around them. Regulators can require airlines above a certain market share to maintain minimum buffers for crew and aircraft, file contingency plans, and test them annually with the regulator and airports. In parallel, publish clear passenger protection standards for mass disruptions, with obligations for rebooking, interline support, and cross-modal assistance.
Long-term stability depends on a market with multiple strong carriers. Tools include paying attention to the challenge of the cost of aviation fuel to the airlines to improve industry viability, easing entry barriers, and ensuring insolvency frameworks preserve operating businesses. A regulator’s mission includes guarding against excessive concentration that creates systemic risk.
Airlines must prioritize resilience alongside cost efficiency. Maintain reserve crew pools, strategic temporary bases, and pre-position pilots to avoid disruptions. Use advanced rostering tools to simulate rules, forecast fatigue, and run “what-if” scenarios. Diversify operational risks across schedules and fleet to prevent regulatory tweaks or shocks from triggering systemic failure.
Recently a flight for which I had planned to be on time for a meeting was cancelled after it was delayed. It does happen in the industry but communication and care during disruption is important to cushion the impact of a negative passenger experience. Airlines must elevate crisis communications from reactive updates to real-time, omnichannel engagement — push notifications, in-terminal displays, and proactive rebooking offers. Clear, timely messaging reduces anxiety and stabilises airports in the crucial early hours of a disruption.
Airports must treat airline meltdowns like weather crises: expand queuing capacity, deploy help desks and volunteers, coordinate with transport and hotels for stranded passengers. Integrate airline and regulator data into command centres, run simulations to predict queues and chokepoints, and stage staff and equipment for rapid response.
Passenger care is a core competency an airport must bear in mind. Rapid provisioning of water, food, power banks, kids’ corners, and quiet rooms mitigates stress and reduces conflict. Clear signage and multilingual volunteers matter. Airports and airlines should co-fund a disruption-care playbook — a set of standards triggered when cancellations cross a threshold.
Africa has aviation ambitions — more aircraft orders, expanded international and intra- continental footprints, and rising passenger volumes — these are laudable, but they must be matched with a resilient operating environment. Where there is a crisis it dents a country’s image among travellers and investors; restoring confidence will require structural repair as much as it requires public apologies. There are lessons from the Asian continent for all in the aviation industry.
Ekelem Airhihen, an accredited mediator, has an MBA from the Lagos Business School. He is a member, ACI Airport Non-aeronautical Revenue Activities Committee; his interests are in market research, customer experience and performance measurement, negotiation, strategy and data and business analytics. He can be reached on ekyair@yahoo.com and +2348023125396 (WhatsApp only).
