Multiple domestic airlines in India, including IndiGo, SpiceJet, and Akasa Air, have triggered fresh travel disruptions after cancelling more than a dozen flights across key metro routes linking Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, and other major cities. The latest wave of cancellations, coming on top of weeks of intermittent delays and weather-related disruptions, has left passengers scrambling for alternatives, inflamed airfares on prime sectors, and raised renewed questions about the resilience of India’s aviation ecosystem during peak winter and volatile weather conditions.
Fresh Cancellations Hit Major Metro Hubs
The latest disruption involves a cluster of cancellations spread across India’s busiest airports, with flight tracking data and airport schedules showing services scrubbed or substantially delayed on trunk routes connecting Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai, as well as key regional links to cities such as Ahmedabad, Kolkata, and Guwahati. While the absolute number this week runs to over a dozen confirmed cancellations and several more severe delays, the ripple effects on missed connections and overbooked alternate services have compounded the impact on passengers.
IndiGo, India’s largest carrier by market share, has remained in the spotlight after a protracted period of operational strain in recent months, including earlier mass cancellations from six metro airports and continuing schedule adjustments tied to crew duty rules and high congestion. SpiceJet and Akasa Air, though operating smaller networks than IndiGo, have also reported cancellations and rescheduling on select routes, particularly where dense fog in northern India or low visibility at airports such as Delhi and Lucknow has made operations more difficult.
At the same time, conditions at regional hubs have further intensified disruption. In Ahmedabad, for instance, dense fog across northern sectors and cascading delays resulted in multiple cancellations and delays affecting IndiGo, Akasa Air, SpiceJet, and other carriers, adding yet another layer of uncertainty for travelers attempting to connect via metro airports to the rest of the domestic network.
Weather, Crew Rules, and Congestion Combine to Strain Operations
Airline executives and aviation regulators point to a confluence of factors behind the latest cancellations. Seasonal winter fog across northern India is a perennial challenge, frequently reducing visibility at airports in Delhi, Lucknow, Chandigarh, and other northern cities. Even with advanced instrument landing systems installed on some runways, not all aircraft or crew are equipped or certified to operate in the lowest-visibility conditions, forcing airlines to delay or cancel services when fog thickens beyond safe operating thresholds.
Beyond weather, carriers are still adapting to updated Flight Duty Time Limit (FDTL) rules that govern pilot and cabin crew working hours. IndiGo’s earlier mass cancellations and network shake-up were closely linked to crew availability after regulatory changes tightened rest norms, prompting the airline to seek temporary exemptions from the civil aviation regulator while it worked to rebalance schedules and staffing. Although IndiGo has since reported recovery of most of its network connectivity, the system remains vulnerable to further disruption when fog, congestion, or other operational shocks collide with already stretched rosters.
Congestion at major metro airports further amplifies the impact of any delay. When foggy conditions or rain slow down arrivals and departures at Delhi or Mumbai, aircraft and crew rotations across the country are thrown off schedule. Delays compound over the course of the day, forcing airlines to prioritise higher-demand routes and, in some cases, proactively cancel selected flights to restore some measure of on-time performance on the remainder of their networks.
Passengers Stranded, With Long Queues and Frayed Tempers
For passengers, the immediate effect has been long queues, uncertain wait times, and often limited assistance at overcrowded terminals. Recent episodes at Bengaluru’s Terminal 1 and other major hubs have highlighted how quickly terminal infrastructure can be overwhelmed when a critical mass of flights are delayed or cancelled within a short window, with check in counters, security lanes, and baggage belts pushed beyond their designed capacity.
Several travelers have described arriving at airports to find their flights cancelled at short notice, sometimes after boarding times were already displayed on departure screens. Others have reported fragmented communication from airlines, with text message alerts and email updates arriving late or not at all, leaving them reliant on harried ground staff or generic social media posts to understand their options. Families traveling for weddings, medical appointments, and international connections have been particularly hard hit, often forced to rearrange hotel stays, onward tickets, and work commitments at substantial cost.
In some cases, passengers have been left in limbo for hours, unsure if flights would eventually depart or be cancelled outright. This uncertainty drives many to queue at multiple service points simultaneously, crowding customer service desks, airline counters, and gate podiums, injecting further stress into an already volatile environment and increasing the risk of miscommunication between airline teams and frustrated flyers.
Airfares Surge on Key Routes as Capacity Tightens
The latest cancellations have fed directly into a sharp spike in last minute fares on India’s busiest city pairs. When IndiGo, SpiceJet, Akasa Air, and other carriers pull even a modest number of flights from high-demand sectors such as Delhi to Mumbai, Delhi to Bengaluru, or Chennai to Delhi, the sudden loss of capacity pushes spot prices on remaining services to steep levels. Past disruptions have seen one way fares on metro routes climb several times above typical levels, and early indications from online travel agencies suggest similar patterns emerging again as affected passengers rush to rebook.
Airlines and travel aggregators note that when one major carrier scales back its schedule, booking volumes on rival airlines rise rapidly, with the most convenient timings and nonstop services selling out first. Those passengers who can defer travel often choose to postpone, but many with fixed commitments end up paying premium prices for whatever seats are left, sometimes cobbling together multi stop itineraries via intermediate hubs such as Hyderabad, Pune, or Ahmedabad to reach their final destinations.
The surge in fares has already sparked renewed debate over whether India’s aviation market needs stronger guardrails in times of exceptional disruption, particularly around last-minute fare levels on essential trunk routes. While carriers argue that dynamic pricing is necessary to manage demand and protect revenue, consumer advocates contend that ordinary travelers should not bear the full brunt of systemic shocks that originate in regulatory changes, weather, or macro operational failures.
Regulatory Scrutiny and Calls for Better Passenger Protections
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has been monitoring the situation closely, especially after earlier episodes when IndiGo received temporary easing of some FDTL constraints in a bid to stabilise operations. Regulators have asked airlines to provide detailed roadmaps for restoring normal schedules, improving crew planning, and minimising the risk of cascading cancellations across the network.
Policy voices and passenger rights groups are also pushing for clearer, more consistently enforced compensation norms. Under existing frameworks, airlines are required to offer refunds or alternative travel in the event of cancellations attributable to their operations, but passengers often report challenges in securing prompt refunds, rebooking on comparable timings, or obtaining hotel and meal vouchers during long delays. The grey area between weather as an uncontrollable factor and operational mismanagement as a controllable one leaves ample room for confusion and dispute.
Some aviation experts argue that India should move toward a more codified passenger rights charter, modeled loosely on regimes in other large markets, where the level of compensation or assistance escalates based on the length of delay and the cause of disruption. They note that predictable, transparent standards could incentivise airlines to invest more aggressively in resilience, even as it offers travelers greater confidence that they will not be left stranded without recourse when irregular operations hit.
Airlines’ Response: Advisories, Waivers, and Schedule Adjustments
In response to the latest disruptions, IndiGo, SpiceJet, and Akasa Air have issued advisories advising passengers to regularly check flight status before heading to the airport, arrive earlier than usual given the likelihood of congestion, and use digital channels to manage bookings. A mix of full refunds, free date changes, and waivers on rescheduling fees has been offered on affected flights, though the extent of relief varies by carrier and the root cause of the disruption.
Carriers are also actively pruning and retiming their schedules for the remaining weeks of the winter season, focusing on strengthening performance on core routes and trimming marginal or overlapping frequencies that are more prone to cancellation when weather or crew availability becomes an issue. For IndiGo, this builds on an existing corrective plan centered on optimising crew rotations, adjusting turnaround times, and building contingency buffers into its timetable.
Akasa Air and SpiceJet, while dealing with fewer absolute flights than IndiGo, are similarly recalibrating operations around key city pairs where fog and congestion have proved most disruptive. This includes early morning and late evening departures from fog prone northern airports, along with select services from regional hubs feeding into Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai. By concentrating capacity and refining timings, airlines hope to restore reliability while still meeting strong underlying demand in India’s fast growing domestic market.
What Travelers Should Know and How to Prepare
For travelers planning to fly in and out of Indian metro cities in the coming days, the evolving situation calls for a blend of vigilance and flexibility. Aviation advisors recommend checking flight status repeatedly in the 24 hours leading up to departure, not just once at the time of booking, since last minute operational changes and weather forecasts can trigger late schedule adjustments. Using official airline apps and opt in alerts can provide faster updates than relying solely on airport display boards.
Arriving at the airport well ahead of time is particularly important for early morning departures in fog affected regions, where security lines and document checks can lengthen considerably when multiple banks of flights are bunched together after a fog clearance window. Travelers with tight onward connections, including international flights, should consider leaving larger buffers between sectors or, where possible, booking through itineraries on a single ticket to improve the chances of being reprotected if delays mount.
Passengers should also familiarise themselves with each airline’s disruption policies. Understanding the difference between a weather related cancellation and one caused by operational reasons can help travelers know when they are entitled to refunds, complimentary rebooking, or additional assistance such as meal coupons or accommodation. Keeping receipts and documentation of extra costs incurred as a result of disruptions may also be useful when seeking reimbursement or travel insurance claims later.
Longer Term Implications for India’s Aviation Ecosystem
The current spate of cancellations involving IndiGo, SpiceJet, and Akasa Air underscores the delicate balance that underpins India’s aviation growth story. Even as passenger numbers rise and new routes are launched, the system’s resilience is tested each winter by fog, each monsoon by heavy rain, and each regulatory adjustment by the limits of crew and fleet planning. Episodes where over a dozen flights are pulled from schedules across major metros may not seem severe in isolation, but they reveal how tightly coupled the network has become and how quickly localised problems can spread nationwide.
If India is to maintain its trajectory as one of the world’s fastest growing air travel markets, investments will be needed not just in more aircraft, but in infrastructure, technology, and processes that can absorb shocks more gracefully. Enhanced runway and terminal capacity, broader deployment of advanced landing systems, better data driven scheduling, and closer coordination between airlines, airports, and regulators will all form part of the long term solution.
For now, however, travelers are left to navigate another challenging spell of irregular operations, as IndiGo, SpiceJet, Akasa Air, and their peers work to stabilise timetables, the regulator monitors compliance, and winter weather continues to test the limits of India’s aviation system. The hope within the industry is that each disruption accelerates the lessons learned, pushing airlines and authorities toward a more robust framework that can keep India flying reliably, even under difficult skies.