Could IndiGo have hired more pilots to prevent the crisis?

Starting this month, IndiGo’s operations unravelled as thousands of flights were cancelled. The primary trigger was the airline’s failure to prepare for the new pilot rest and duty norms (Phase II), which came into full effect on November 1, 2025.

These stricter mandates — specifically raising the weekly rest period of pilots from 36 to 48 hours and capping night landings — effectively shrank the available pool of pilot hours. The company informed officials that “misjudgement and planning gaps” led to the fiasco.

IndiGo is managing the current crisis by contracting its daily operations from 2,300 to approximately 1,800–1,900 flights. This creates a distinct ‘lose-lose’ scenario: the airline limits its output, and passengers face reduced connectivity. The impact is magnified by IndiGo’s sheer dominance; its market share — measured in Revenue Passenger Kilometres — has climbed from under 40% in 2015-16 to over 60% in 2024-25.

Its nearest competitor, Air India, trails significantly at roughly 14%. With rivals grappling with their own aircraft shortages and scale limitations, the broader industry is ill-equipped to bridge the supply gap left by the market leader.

Could IndiGo have averted this fiasco by aligning its hiring strategy with the impending regulatory shifts? According to a recent report by Mint, the airline intends to onboard over 900 pilots by next December, with an initial intake of about 150 by February. Could this have been done before?

To understand the crisis, consider IndiGo’s massive operational expansion. The chart below plots IndiGo’s share in total industry pilots versus total flying hours. In 2019-20, IndiGo had 44.6% of all pilots and contributed to 42.1% of total flight hours. By 2023-24, its pilot share dipped to 43.6% while flight hours surged to 50.9%.

While this does not strictly prove that pilots are ‘overworked’, it hints at a divergence of operations scaling up significantly, but the pilot workforce not keeping pace.

Capt. A. Ranganathan, a former airline instructor pilot and aviation safety adviser, confirms this. “IndiGo knew very well that they should have hired more pilots by November 1 this year. Despite not doing that, they applied for approval for the winter schedule this year. They actually increased the number of flights, which was approved by the DGCA.”

Would hiring more pilots erode the bottom line of IndiGo, the only consistently profitable Indian carrier? To answer this, we analysed pilot expenditures. In 2023-24, IndiGo spent ₹31,217 million on 5,038 pilots, averaging ₹6.2 million per pilot annually.

This figure is slightly lower than Air India’s, yet higher than SpiceJet’s. The chart below shows the average expenditure incurred by airlines per pilot in 2023-24

With plans to onboard 900 new pilots by next year, a back-of-the-envelope calculation projects an additional annual cost of roughly ₹5,500 million.

This additional ₹5,500 million outlay constitutes merely 6–8% of IndiGo’s Profit After Tax, which stood at ₹81.6 billion in 2023-24 and ₹72.5 billion in 2024-25. The chart below shows the Net Profit or loss recorded by IndiGo after Income Tax in the last decade.

Even if we assume these hires are strictly for compliance rather than expansion, the trade-off is stark: the airline had to forego less than 8% of its surplus to insulate itself from this fiasco. It remains to be seen if the actual losses from the current crisis will outweigh this expense.

According to Mr. Ranganathan, IndiGo will in fact struggle to complete these additional hires. He noted that the airline delayed promoting many Senior First Officers to Captains, prompting an exodus of pilots. He also highlighted that allowances have been cut.

The data for the charts were sourced from the Handbook on Civil Aviation Statistics and other reports published by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation