Fresh Wave of Cancellations Disrupts Key Domestic Routes Across India’s Winter Skies

India’s domestic aviation network is once again under strain as a fresh wave of cancellations and operational disruptions ripples across key routes. IndiGo, Akasa Air, SpiceJet and other major carriers have scrapped over a dozen new flights in recent days, affecting services to and from Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Guwahati, Chandigarh and several other important business and leisure destinations. The latest turbulence comes on top of months of operational stress driven by crew scheduling issues, changing duty-time rules and bouts of severe winter weather, leaving passengers facing long queues, last minute schedule changes and steep ticket prices on the remaining seats.

A New Round of Cancellations Hits Core Indian Routes

The most immediate impact of the latest disruption has been felt on trunk routes linking India’s metro cities and regional hubs. Flights serving Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Guwahati and Chandigarh have seen a fresh set of cancellations, as airlines adjust schedules in response to operational constraints and weather related challenges. While the total number of affected flights is modest compared with the large scale shutdowns seen in late 2025, the concentration on heavily travelled routes has amplified the inconvenience.

Passengers on early morning and late evening departures have been particularly vulnerable, as these services are more exposed to dense winter fog across north and east India. Airlines have pre emptively pulled some rotations from the schedule on days with poor visibility forecasts, in an attempt to avoid rolling delays and aircraft becoming trapped out of position. In practice, this has meant that travellers bound for and from cities such as Chandigarh and Kolkata have arrived at the airport only to discover their flights canceled or consolidated into later departures.

For those connecting through major hubs such as Mumbai and Chennai, the ripple effects have been immediate. Missed connections, rebooking queues and extended layovers have become common, especially for passengers traveling on separate tickets or with tight transfer windows. The result is a national network that remains operational, but with pockets of acute disruption in precisely the corridors that business and leisure travelers rely on most.

IndiGo’s Ongoing Scheduling Crisis Sets the Backdrop

The current bout of cancellations cannot be viewed in isolation. It follows directly from the deep scheduling crisis that engulfed IndiGo, India’s largest airline, starting in early December 2025. After new crew duty time and rest rules came into force, the carrier struggled to reconfigure its complex roster of pilots and cabin crew across a network that typically operates more than 2,000 flights a day. Within ten days, thousands of IndiGo services had been scrapped, triggering scenes of overcrowded terminals, stranded passengers and plummeting on time performance across multiple airports.

Regulators and the Ministry of Civil Aviation stepped in, blaming misjudgment and gaps in planning for the magnitude of the meltdown. IndiGo was granted temporary regulatory relief, including a one time exemption from stricter night duty limits, but the crisis left a long tail of residual instability. Even as the airline has restored the bulk of its schedule, localized spikes of cancellations continue to appear whenever there is additional pressure on staff availability or airport operations. For cities like Chandigarh, this has meant repeated days where a cluster of IndiGo flights to Chennai, Mumbai or Ahmedabad has vanished from the departure board with little notice.

The long running nature of the IndiGo disruptions has eroded passenger confidence and thinned the margin of error across the wider system. With one dominant carrier already operating close to its limits, even modest additional strains such as fog, air traffic congestion or a technical issue in one station can trigger knock on disruptions in multiple cities. The latest cancellations to and from Chennai, Kolkata and Guwahati are symptomatic of an ecosystem that remains fragile despite regulatory intervention and airline assurances that full normalcy will be restored by February 2026.

Fog, Winter Weather and Operational Constraints Converge

While IndiGo’s internal crew planning failures have provided the backdrop, the immediate trigger for several of the new cancellations has been the familiar winter combination of dense fog and poor visibility. Airlines including IndiGo, SpiceJet and Air India have issued a series of travel advisories in early January 2026, warning passengers that flights across northern and eastern India may be delayed, rescheduled or canceled outright when low visibility procedures are in force. Airports in and around Delhi, as well as regional gateways such as Chandigarh, have been particularly affected on foggy mornings.

To cope with these conditions, IndiGo has temporarily cancelled a number of flights from Chandigarh, explicitly citing safety and the desire to avoid passengers waiting for hours in packed terminals while conditions slowly improve. Similar pressure points have emerged at Kolkata and Guwahati, where fog and low cloud can complicate operations even when the runway itself remains technically open. On such days, airlines must juggle crew duty limits, aircraft rotations and congested air traffic control slots, often concluding that the only viable option is to trim the schedule.

Compounding the weather challenges are the still evolving pilot duty regulations that came into force late in 2025. Even with temporary exemptions for IndiGo’s Airbus narrowbody fleet, carriers must walk a fine line between maintaining robust schedules and respecting the envelope of legally permitted working hours. When disruptions cascade through a day’s operation because of fog or a technical fault at a major hub, crews can quickly bump up against their maximum allowed duty time, forcing airlines to cancel or consolidate flights at short notice to avoid breaching safety rules.

Akasa Air, SpiceJet and Other Carriers Feel the Knock On Strain

Although IndiGo has been at the center of the storm, rival low cost carriers such as Akasa Air and SpiceJet have not remained untouched. As IndiGo canceled thousands of flights during the worst of its scheduling crisis, demand spilled over onto competing airlines, filling seats far in advance and compressing spare capacity. That surge has not fully dissipated, and when fresh disruptions strike, these carriers find themselves with limited room to accommodate displaced travelers from other airlines, even if they wish to do so.

In recent advisories relating to fog and poor weather, SpiceJet and other airlines have flagged the possibility of cancellations and significant delays, particularly on short haul domestic routes. Some of the newly canceled services touching cities like Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata are understood to be pre emptive cuts by these carriers, reflecting a preference for a leaner, more reliable schedule rather than stretching resources to their limits on marginal flights that risk being disrupted anyway. While this strategy may make operational sense, it inevitably translates into fewer choices for passengers on specific days and time bands.

Akasa Air, which has been rapidly expanding its domestic footprint, faces a different challenge. As a younger airline with a smaller fleet, it has less flexibility to swap aircraft or rotate crews when weather or congestion snarls operations at one or two key stations. In a network still building its resilience, disruptions at a hub can demand difficult trade offs, and that has contributed to targeted cancellations on some routes linking secondary cities to the major metros. For travelers, the distinction between causes is academic: they are confronted with the same reality of rebooked plans and uncertain arrival times.

Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Guwahati and Chandigarh Under the Microscope

Among the destinations most visibly impacted by the latest wave of cancellations, each plays a distinct role in India’s aviation map. Chennai serves as a vital gateway to the south, linking domestic travelers onward to international services to Southeast Asia and the Gulf. In recent weeks, IndiGo has canceled multiple departures from the city during peak disruption days, at one point briefly grounding all outbound services for several hours. Even now, select rotations to and from northern cities remain vulnerable on fog affected days when aircraft and crew run late or run out of duty hours before completing their planned legs.

Mumbai, India’s financial capital, has experienced both direct cancellations and heavy congestion as it absorbs displaced traffic from other airports. When IndiGo grounded more than 100 flights at the city’s main airport on a single day during the height of the crisis, the impact was felt across departure banks and connecting itineraries, including routes to Kolkata and Guwahati. The city’s already tight runway capacity leaves little room to recover when schedules go awry, and any new cancellations reverberate quickly through an already crowded timetable.

Further east, Kolkata and Guwahati are key anchors for travel across eastern and northeastern India. Flights connecting these cities with Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru form the backbone of both business and visiting friends and relatives traffic. Cancellations or delays on these links can isolate smaller destinations further afield, especially when onward services operate only once or twice daily. Travelers bound for Guwahati, for example, have reported being rerouted through alternative hubs or shifted to next day flights when their original connections via Kolkata or Delhi failed to materialize.

Chandigarh, meanwhile, has emerged as a bellwether for winter time disruptions. Positioned in the northern fog belt, it has seen successive clusters of IndiGo cancellations to major cities including Chennai and Mumbai, not only due to weather but also because the airline has used the station as a pressure relief valve during its broader operational struggles. Each time a slate of flights disappears from the schedule, hundreds of passengers find themselves scrambling for alternatives, often at inflated fares.

Fare Spikes, Capacity Crunch and the Government’s Response

One of the most painful side effects of the cascading disruptions has been the steep rise in airfares on routes where capacity has suddenly tightened. As IndiGo pulled hundreds of flights from the system during its scheduling crisis, economy fares on competing services soared, in some cases tripling or quadrupling on metro to metro routes. Passengers reported eye watering last minute prices on one way journeys between cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, as limited seats across all carriers were snapped up by stranded travelers.

Regulators responded by imposing temporary nationwide caps on economy class fares across distance bands, seeking to prevent what officials described as exploitation of passengers in distress. While these ceilings have helped rein in the most extreme examples of surge pricing, they have not fully offset the perception that domestic air travel has become more expensive and less predictable, particularly for those who cannot book far ahead. For peak time flights in and out of disrupted cities such as Chennai, Mumbai and Chandigarh, availability in lower fare buckets has remained chronically tight.

The government has also pressed airlines to expedite refunds for canceled flights and to provide better on ground support during major disruption events. This includes instructions to supply water, snacks and clear information to delayed passengers, as well as to improve digital communication via apps, SMS and email. At the same time, authorities face a delicate balancing act: they must enforce consumer protections and operational discipline without stifling an industry that has been a powerful engine of connectivity and economic growth.

What Travelers Need to Know Before Flying in Early 2026

For travelers planning journeys within India over the next few weeks, the evolving situation calls for heightened awareness and flexibility. While the vast majority of flights continue to operate, the risk of last minute changes is higher than usual on certain routes and during specific time windows. Early morning departures from northern and eastern airports, evenings during peak congestion, and routes heavily served by IndiGo are particularly prone to adjustments when fog or crew constraints bite.

Passengers are being strongly advised by airlines to monitor their flight status closely in the 24 hours leading up to departure, and again on the day of travel. However, even with diligent checking, some disruptions will only become apparent within a few hours of takeoff, especially when they stem from rapidly changing weather conditions or knock on effects from earlier delays. Building extra time into itineraries, avoiding ultra tight connections and considering contingency plans, such as alternative airports or train options for certain sectors, can help reduce stress.

Those with non essential travel may benefit from greater date flexibility, as shifting a trip by a day or choosing off peak travel times can improve the odds of a smooth journey. Travelers who must arrive by a fixed deadline, such as for business commitments or important family events, may want to book earlier flights in the day or even travel a day in advance, particularly on routes touching fog prone northern cities or those strongly dependent on IndiGo’s network.

Can India’s Aviation Network Rebuild Resilience?

The current round of cancellations involving IndiGo, Akasa Air, SpiceJet and others underscores both how far India’s aviation sector has come and how much work remains to build resilience into a system stretched by rapid growth. The combination of a dominant low cost carrier, tightly optimized schedules and infrastructure limits at key airports has delivered cheap fares and high connectivity, but it has also left the network vulnerable when any pillar wobbles, whether due to new regulations, a technical fault or seasonal weather.

Regulators are now grappling with the challenge of strengthening oversight without undermining the commercial agility that has allowed Indian airlines to expand so quickly. Ensuring that carriers have robust scenario planning for regulatory changes and weather disruptions, enforcing realistic scheduling that respects crew duty rules, and incentivizing investment in backup capacity at critical nodes will be crucial steps. Equally important is transparent communication with the traveling public when things go wrong, including clear explanations, realistic rebooking options and timely refunds.

For now, travelers to and from Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Guwahati, Chandigarh and other key cities are likely to encounter intermittent turbulence in the form of new cancellations and schedule reshuffles. As airlines and authorities work toward a promised return to full stability by February 2026, the experience of this season may prove to be an inflection point, prompting a reevaluation of how India manages the delicate balance between efficiency, safety and reliability in one of the world’s fastest growing aviation markets.