Thousands of air travelers across Asia are facing unexpected disruptions as Air India, SpiceJet, IndiGo, and Xiamen Air collectively ground at least 9 flights and delay more than 700 departures across key hubs. Passengers in Dubai, Chennai, Delhi, and several major Chinese cities are among the hardest hit, with rolling delays, last minute cancellations, and complex rescheduling creating a difficult start to the week for business and leisure travelers alike.
What We Know So Far About the Grounded Flights and Delays
According to operational data compiled from major Asian airports and airline statements, a cluster of disruptions has forced at least 9 flights operated by Air India, SpiceJet, IndiGo, and Xiamen Air to be grounded, while around 726 scheduled departures have suffered delays of varying lengths. The problems are not confined to one route or single hub, but spread across the airlines’ networks, affecting both domestic and international services.
Air India has been managing a fragile schedule since a series of safety checks and maintenance directives disrupted its Boeing 787 operations in 2025, leading to dozens of cancellations linked to post-incident inspections and tighter oversight of its widebody fleet. While regulators have since signaled that aircraft are broadly compliant with safety standards, the carrier’s network remains sensitive to aircraft availability issues and airspace constraints, particularly on routes linking India with the Middle East, Europe, and North America.
IndiGo, India’s largest carrier by market share, continues to operate under the shadow of a major scheduling and staffing crisis that erupted in late 2025. New flight duty time limitations for crew, introduced in phases, collided with aggressive winter scheduling and existing pilot shortages, triggering thousands of cancellations and a sustained deterioration in on time performance at airports including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai. Even as the airline has stabilized its broader timetable, the latest wave of delays shows how thin its operational margins remain.
SpiceJet and Xiamen Air are contending with their own sets of pressures, ranging from weather disruptions and congested airspace to aircraft rotations that leave little slack in the system. For Chinese carriers such as Xiamen Air, knock on effects from regional capacity constraints and dense traffic flows along coastal and cross border routes mean that a disruption in one node can quickly cascade across multiple cities.
How Passengers in Dubai, Chennai, Delhi, and Chinese Cities Are Being Affected
In practical terms, the disruption is playing out most visibly at a handful of high traffic hubs. In India, Delhi and Chennai are again seeing long queues at check in and security, extended waits at boarding gates, and crowded customer service desks as travelers attempt to rebook flights or sort out missed connections. These airports were already at the center of previous IndiGo scheduling chaos, and the latest delays are reigniting concerns about the resilience of India’s aviation infrastructure during peak travel periods.
For Dubai, a premier long haul transit hub, the impact is concentrated on passengers flying to and from India and China on affected carriers or connecting between them and Gulf or European airlines. A delayed IndiGo or Air India service from Delhi or Chennai can cause travelers to miss onward flights operated by Middle Eastern carriers, potentially forcing expensive last minute rebookings or overnight stays. For those on restrictive tickets, options can be particularly limited, leaving them reliant on goodwill gestures or paid changes.
Across Chinese cities, including secondary hubs linked by Xiamen Air, travelers are encountering a familiar pattern of rolling departure time revisions. Short haul flights that serve as feeders into larger international gateways are especially vulnerable: a delay departing a coastal city can unravel carefully timed itineraries built around tight connections to long haul services bound for the Middle East, India, or Southeast Asia. While many passengers are being re accommodated, the process can be slow and communication uneven.
Families, migrant workers, and small business travelers are among the most affected segments. Those who have planned around fixed dates for weddings, job start dates, or medical appointments are finding that even a few hours’ delay can carry serious personal and financial consequences, particularly when rescheduled flights are already full and alternative routes are limited.
Why This Is Happening: Crew Rules, Safety Checks, Weather, and Airspace
The current wave of disruptions does not stem from a single dramatic incident, but rather from several overlapping stressors that have been building across the Asian aviation system. In India, tighter crew duty and rest rules, rolled out in stages through late 2025 and into early 2026, have forced carriers to adjust schedules, increase pilot hiring, and rebuild rosters. IndiGo, which was aggressively operating one of the region’s densest domestic networks, struggled to adapt in time, resulting in a severe crew shortage and thousands of cancellations in December 2025.
Regulators temporarily relaxed some of the new rules to give IndiGo breathing room, but the episode exposed a deeper vulnerability: many airlines were operating with minimal operational buffers after years of rapid growth, leaving little capacity to absorb regulatory shifts or demand spikes. Even as IndiGo’s average punctuality over the year placed it among the more reliable Asia Pacific airlines, the December meltdown demonstrated how quickly those metrics can collapse when staffing and scheduling estimates prove optimistic.
Air India has been dealing with its own set of constraints. In June 2025, a fatal crash involving a Boeing 787 near Ahmedabad triggered intensive safety inspections and a review of the carrier’s widebody operations. Dozens of flights were cancelled as regulators conducted surveillance of the fleet and called for tighter internal coordination on maintenance and safety compliance. Although authorities later reported no systemic safety defects in the 787 fleet, the checks consumed aircraft time and complicated international rotations, effects that continue to reverberate whenever the airline faces additional weather or airspace challenges.
Weather and geopolitical factors continue to play a complicating role. Heavy monsoon rains have periodically caused delays and cancellations at major Indian airports, prompting repeated advisories from carriers such as IndiGo and SpiceJet for travelers to expect slower operations, reduced visibility, and longer travel times to and from airports. Separately, regional airspace closures and restrictions linked to security tensions and military operations have forced carriers including Air India and IndiGo to reroute or suspend services to certain destinations, elongating flight times and tightening aircraft utilization.
What This Means for Booked Flights, Refunds, and Rescheduling
For passengers holding tickets on Air India, SpiceJet, IndiGo, or Xiamen Air in the coming days, the most immediate question is whether to expect more cancellations or only delays. So far, the pattern suggests that most affected departures are operating, but with significant schedule slippage rather than outright removal of flights. However, when delays exceed crew duty limits or aircraft run into mandatory maintenance windows, last minute cancellations can still occur, particularly late in the day.
In recent disruption episodes, IndiGo and other carriers have offered a combination of free rescheduling to the next available flight, full refunds in cases of outright cancellation, and in limited circumstances, hotel accommodation or meal vouchers for severely delayed passengers. During the height of its December crisis, IndiGo processed refunds running into hundreds of crores of rupees and publicly committed to clearing all eligible claims. That track record offers some guidance for what passengers can expect now, although policies may vary depending on fare type and whether delays are attributed to factors deemed beyond the airline’s control, such as weather or airspace closures.
Air India’s response following its 787 inspections also sets a precedent. The carrier allowed affected travelers to switch to alternative dates or destinations where possible without additional change fees when flights were cancelled due to regulatory checks. SpiceJet, during previous monsoon disruptions, issued advisories encouraging passengers to opt for rebooking well in advance when conditions deteriorated, signaling a willingness to be flexible as long as travelers contacted the airline before the original departure time.
For Xiamen Air customers, options typically include free date changes within a limited window when flights are significantly delayed or cancelled, particularly where the disruption originates from operational reasons within the airline’s control. However, for itineraries involving multiple airlines on separate tickets, responsibility can quickly become fragmented, and passengers may find that onward carriers are not obligated to accommodate missed connections without extra cost.
How to Navigate the Disruptions if You Are Traveling Soon
Travelers with upcoming flights through Delhi, Chennai, Dubai, or major Chinese hubs should shift from a passive “wait and see” posture to a more proactive strategy. The first priority is to monitor flight status frequently, beginning at least 24 hours before departure and again on the morning of travel. As seen in recent crises, airlines sometimes revise schedules multiple times in a single day as aircraft and crew become available or as cascading delays build up.
Arriving at the airport earlier than usual is advisable, even if online check in indicates that a flight is on time. During disruptions, security lines and check in counters can quickly become overwhelmed as agents handle rebooking and special requests. Extra time is especially critical in large hubs such as Delhi and Dubai, where terminal transfers, immigration checks, and secondary screenings can significantly extend transit times, particularly for travelers on separate tickets or with checked baggage that must be re tagged.
Passengers with essential time sensitive commitments, such as international connection windows or fixed event dates, may wish to explore voluntary changes even before the airline issues a formal advisory. Moving to a morning departure, for example, can reduce the risk of being caught by the cumulative effect of day long delays, which often peak in the evening. In extreme cases, purchasing a fully flexible ticket on an alternative carrier as a back up, then cancelling one of the two once the situation clarifies, can be a pragmatic, if more expensive, hedge.
Keeping documentation organized is also crucial. Boarding passes, delay notifications, receipts for food, transport, and accommodation, and any written commitments from airline staff can all support later claims for refunds or compensation where applicable. While Asia does not have a single, unified compensation regime equivalent to Europe’s rules, local consumer protection standards, credit card benefits, and travel insurance policies can still provide meaningful redress if travelers are able to substantiate their losses.
What the Turbulence Reveals About Asia’s Aviation System
The latest disruptions underscore how delicately balanced Asia’s aviation ecosystem has become in the post pandemic recovery era. Airlines in India and China have rushed to restore and expand capacity as demand rebounded faster than anticipated, yet training new pilots, acquiring aircraft, and adjusting infrastructure has lagged behind. The result is a system where carriers can appear highly efficient and punctual during normal operations, only to unravel quickly under the strain of regulatory changes, weather shocks, or airspace restrictions.
IndiGo’s December 2025 crisis highlighted the risk of relying on thin staffing margins and ambitious scheduling assumptions in a regulatory environment that is still evolving. Being forced to cancel thousands of flights over a matter of days, with more than a million passengers affected, has put intense pressure on management, regulators, and airport operators to develop more conservative, resilient planning. The airline’s subsequent efforts to restore punctuality and adjust its network, while commendable, also illustrate how long it can take to rebuild trust once such a failure becomes visible to the public.
For Air India, the convergence of fleet modernization, safety oversight, and geopolitical airspace shifts has made network planning exceptionally complex. The carrier’s decision to temporarily suspend and then gradually reinstate flights over the Middle East and to parts of Europe and North America in 2025 revealed how vulnerable long haul routes are to disruptions far from passengers’ origin or destination airports. Each rerouting adds flight time, fuel costs, and scheduling complications that ripple through the system.
Chinese carriers such as Xiamen Air, operating within one of the world’s most crowded and weather sensitive airspaces, face similar challenges. As China continues to reopen and ramp up international services, bottlenecks in air traffic control, airport slot allocations, and regional weather patterns make punctuality difficult to sustain. Combined with surging demand on popular routes linking Chinese coastal cities with Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and India, even minor technical issues can lead to widespread delays.
What Travelers Should Watch for in the Coming Days
In the short term, travelers should expect a continued period of heightened uncertainty rather than a quick return to perfectly predictable schedules. Airlines are likely to trim or consolidate some flights, especially on overlapping domestic routes or lightly booked international services, to free up aircraft and crew for more critical sectors. This may mean more last minute aircraft swaps and schedule adjustments, as operations teams focus on stabilizing core routes from Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Dubai, and key Chinese hubs.
Regulators and airport operators in India and China are also under pressure to demonstrate that the lessons of recent crises are being absorbed. That could translate into tighter monitoring of schedule planning, more conservative slot allocations during peak weather seasons, and renewed scrutiny of maintenance and crew rostering practices at carriers that have experienced repeated disruptions. While these steps may, in the medium term, make operations more reliable, they can also trigger further short term turbulence as airlines rework their timetables.
For individual travelers, the most realistic approach is to assume that some level of disruption risk now comes baked into flying across Asia’s busiest corridors. Building extra flexibility into plans, favoring longer connection windows, and paying close attention to airline communications can greatly reduce stress when irregular operations occur. Those traveling through Dubai, Chennai, Delhi, and major Chinese cities in the coming days would be wise to keep a close eye on developments from Air India, SpiceJet, IndiGo, and Xiamen Air, recognizing that while most flights will still operate, the odds of delay are significantly elevated.
Ultimately, the current situation is a reminder that Asia’s aviation boom, while transformative for connectivity and economic growth, is still a work in progress when it comes to operational resilience. Until staffing levels, fleet capacity, regulatory frameworks, and infrastructure are better aligned, travelers across the region will need to remain adaptable, informed, and prepared for the occasional bout of turbulence on the ground as well as in the air.