The Ministry of Aviation, India, on 5th December reversed a new policy, which rested pilots every week, following havoc in the country as a result of hundreds of flights being canceled by the largest airline in the country, which is IndiGo Airlines.

#Indigo created aviation chaos across the country after #DGCA issued new crew-rest guidelines, seemingly to show @DGCAIndia its position. This is what a monopoly or duopoly can do.

Someday Jio or Airtel might pull the same move and @TRAI may not be able to do anything. pic.twitter.com/2qEQWiYdT1

— kafi_political (@kafi_political) December 5, 2025

Since Monday morning, airports have been in a mess in India, and the disruption has been attributed by the private carrier to unanticipated operational difficulties.

Thursday, IndiGo acknowledged to the aviation regulators that the operational meltdown was caused by misjudgment and gaps in planning how to adapt to new rules, despite having two years to prepare for the switch.

The new regulations came into force last month, and they are geared towards providing pilots with more time to rest to improve the safety of passengers.

According to the civil aviation minister of India, Ram Mohan Naidu, the rules on flight duty time limitations are on hold, as it was decided.

Naidu made the decision in the best interest of the passengers and, in particular, the elderly population, students, patients, and other persons who depend on air transport to meet their critical needs without compromising on the safety of air travel.

Naidu predicted that his ministry hoped that flight schedules would start stabilising and become normalised tomorrow.

IndiGo, which cancelled all domestic flights on Friday between New Delhi and Chennai, apologised to the travellers for the inconvenience and distress the action caused.

Later on Friday, in a video statement, the CEO of the company, Pieter Elbers, stated that the decision to relax the rules was of great assistance, but that there was still much work to be done.

“The worst day was Friday, which had well over a thousand cancellations,” Elbers said.

He said that the company was anticipating fewer than 1,000 cancellations on Saturday before the company returned to normal between December 10 and 15.

IndiGo, which has 60 percent of the domestic market in India, is operating more than 2,000 flights daily.

Passengers had earlier in the day, on Friday, taken to social media to express their anger, such as the ambassador of Singapore to India, Simon Wong, who was at a loss for words.

“I was among the tens of thousands of passengers who were stranded by #Indigo… I am deeply sorry to the young men in my staff who are expecting me to turn up at his shaadi (wedding). Lost for words,” a posting on the official X handle of the embassy said.

One of the passengers in Delhi airport reported to the broadcaster NDTV that he had not heard any news of the airline in the past 12 hours.

The government had been blamed by its prime minister, Narendra Modi, on its monopoly model, which led to the fiasco, according to its main opponent, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party.

“It is the common Indians who are again made to suffer in terms of delays, cancellations, and powerlessness. This is what India is entitled to: fair competition in all spheres as opposed to match-fixing monopolies,” he stated in a post on X.

Among the largest problems of the no-frills airline is the crisis that has established its reputation by being punctual.

Last week, 200 IndiGo planes were compromised, and an alert was issued by Airbus to do an urgent upgrade on 6,000 aircraft around the world.

India is also among the fastest growing aviation markets in the world, with a record of 500,000 daily flyers being recorded last month.