India’s aviation watchdog introduced the new duty rules nearly two years ago to align with global standards, with airlines meant to adopt them in two phases – in June and November this year.
While other major carriers like Air India say they have implemented them, IndiGo has admitted that it has not been in a position to fully do so in time.
“Did they do this because adopting the new rules would have required them to hire hundreds of new pilots and raised costs?” Mark Martin, an aviation expert, told the BBC.
“They had several months’ notice to implement the rules. All their competitors had complied. Why couldn’t IndiGo step up?” he asked.
In several statements, the airline apologised for the cancellations, acknowledging “unforeseen operational challenges” – from bad weather to “misjudgement and planning gaps” in rolling out the now-withdrawn pilot fatigue rules.
But at least three IndiGo pilots the BBC spoke to said the crisis was reflective of a deeper issue of the airline driving cost savings even at the cost of pilot fatigue.
“Working overtime may be normal for some industries, but aviation is a highly safety-centric profession where fatigue is a silent killer. You don’t even know its effects until it’s too late,” said a pilot who has been with the airline for more than a decade, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Besides the focus on costs, IndiGo’s aggressive expansion, including launching new international routes, “may also have distracted its management from looking into the ‘boring’ nitty-gritty [of rest norms]”, GR Gopinath, founder of the now-defunct Air Deccan, wrote in the Economic Times newspaper.
He also blamed the airline’s undisputed dominance in the aviation sector – with a 60% market share in India, the company flies more than 100 million passengers annually.
“For all practical purposes, the airline is now a monopoly. And what comes with monopolies is indifference,” Mr Gopinath wrote.