Editorial Indigo crisis: Mayhem at airports exposes multiple flaws

The chaos at the airports, caused by large-scale flight delays and cancellations by IndiGo, India’s largest airline by market share, is the result of poor management of crew deployment norms and flight schedules, and the entire responsibility for the disruptions should go to the airline. In the last few days, over 1,000 flights of the airline, which operates about 1,500 daily flights, were affected by delays and cancellations. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had last year revised the Flight Duty Time Limitations, and proposed new norms which increased weekly rest periods, changed the definition of night duty, and imposed stricter caps on night operations. Compliance was expected by June, but implementation was deferred to a phased rollout from July 1 to November 1. But thi