I’ve spent years flying, and the sky has quietly taught me more about life and work than I ever expected. There’s something about being 3,000 ft above the noise that makes the important things obvious 🛩️
1. Small inputs change everything.
A few millimetres on the controls can shift your entire direction.
In life too, small, steady adjustments beat dramatic moves.
2. Trust the instruments.
When things get shaky, emotion is the worst advisor. Pilots rely on their instruments; founders should rely on data.
3. Turbulence isn’t danger.
It’s uncomfortable, not catastrophic.
Most problems feel bigger than they are because we overreact.
4. Crosswinds happen.
You don’t fight them, you correct gently and keep moving.
Most of life is controlled drift with good decisions at the right moments.
5. The runway is longer than you think.
It always feels like you’re running out of room.
But there’s usually more margin than your mind believes.
6. Altitude fixes perspective.
What feels massive on the ground shrinks once you climb. Zooming out can change your perspective.
When an Airline Forgets to Fly Right
The IndiGo fiasco was not an accident. When a player becomes dominant—almost monopolistic—an invisible arrogance enters the system. It shows up first in tone, then in culture, then in operations, and finally in public humiliation. IndiGo went through all those phases, and everyone saw it coming except—ironically—IndiGo itself.
For years, the airline was trained to be arrogant. You could see it at the airport counters, where ground staff spoke to passengers as though they were doing them a favour by checking them in. You could feel it when a traveller asked about a delay and received a cold, templated response. You could sense it when announcements of delays were mumbled into the microphone as though communication was optional.
India Standard Time (IST) became IndiGo Standard Time.
Passengers who arrived three minutes late to the gate were denied boarding—but passengers waited three hours for late aircraft with no apology. Policy was a sword when passengers erred; efficiency was an excuse when the airline failed.
That asymmetry tells the story.
A part of this comes from being stretched thin—staffing to the minimum, pushing schedules harder, asking more from pilots and crew than an institution should. A part of it also came from squeezing the orange too hard. IndiGo had one objective inflight: profits, quarter after quarter, route dominance year after year. Nothing wrong with profits—until the system begins running on fumes.
Culture communicates in whispers before it explodes in headlines.
There was another factor that many industry watchers quietly observed: IndiGo seemed to master the press narrative. When Air India had a delay, it would become a high-decibel event. When IndiGo did, it often disappeared after a headline or two. Somewhere, the playing field did not feel symmetrical.
But you cannot play perception forever. Pilots are human. Crew fatigue is real. When pilot work-life balance becomes secondary, when regulators stretch relaxations to accommodate operations, when efficiency is repeatedly bought at the cost of well-being, something must break.
And it broke earlier than most expected.
There is a lesson beyond aviation here.
A system that squeezes its orange too hard extracts juice faster—but dries the fruit sooner. IndiGo believed the orange was infinite.
The lesson is simple: Efficiency cannot replace empathy.Domination cannot substitute dignity.
And profits cannot outrun fatigue.
Today’s fiasco is not just an airline story.
It is a reminder that in any organisation—when people become resources, when time becomes a weapon, and when success becomes entitlement—the fall is only a matter of when, not whether.
IndiGo will recover. It will fly again and perhaps regain punctuality. But if it does not fix the culture that created this moment, it will carry turbulence long after the skies clear.
When Regulators Wink…
In the first part, we saw how IndiGo is a cautious tale of ‘how not to operate’. An airline that flew on arrogance, structure without soul, and operational discipline minus sensitivity. Today, we look at how there were others—more powerful, more responsible, and far more accountable—who took us all for a ride.
Like where was DGCA in all this?
The regulator is not there to mail circulars, but must enforce them. Were the signs of the impending collapse not visible in the weeks running up to the catastrophe? Did the regulator follow up on implementing new guidelines? If other airlines could fall in line, and Indigo did not, wasn’t DGCA to have stepped in? And now comes the special exemption? For what reason? The DGCA has to be a watchdog of the citizens, not a stenographer to the industry, or in this case to a company.
Regulation is a duty. Passengers do not read compliance reports. They live through the outcomes: delayed flights, mismanaged crew, chaotic airports, and helpless, albeit, ground staff. Was it not DGCA’s mandate to track fleet induction timelines, staffing patterns, and capacity-to-demand ratios? Was it not their responsibility to ask hard questions when an airline was clearly playing rogue. In this case, silence is complicity.
And what about the Civil Aviation Ministry? This government is quick to claim airports built by private firms as its trophies. But governance is not about photo-op inaugurations; governance is about vigilance. Why didn’t the ministry could have intervened, demanded transparency and ensured accountability? A government that claims administrative sophistication cannot fail at basic oversight.
Airlines is not a sector one can casually overlook. India today is flying on the back of a newly mobile middle class. For millions, air travel is not luxury—it is employment, healthcare, emergency travel, and family responsibility. This makes aviation a lifeline. Which brings us to the deeper question no one is formally asking: What exactly is happening inside IndiGo?
Is this only operational strain—or is there a deeper internal fracture? Are large players positioning themselves for advantage? Indigo must be careful lest it go up for grabs, citing ‘national interest.’
When the dominant airline in a country shakes the consequences are serious. Customer sentiment destabilizes. India needs airlines that perform, regulators who supervise, and ministries that govern—not cheerlead. This is not about punishing companies; it is about preventing crisis. Accountability is not vengeance; it is insurance.
The Indian flyer deserves better. And the first step toward better is acknowledging that while IndiGo stumbled, those meant to ensure its steadiness were busy looking elsewhere.
A regulator that reacts is not a regulator. A ministry that pats itself for success but fails to notice fire signals is not a steward. India’s aviation needs institutions that fly higher than the aircraft they oversee.
<Concluded> ~Pattabhiram Sir
The Indigo mess has exposed something ugly — not just in the system, but in us.
1. We are brave only at home. If this crisis had unfolded at Heathrow or JFK, every stranded Indian would have quietly queued up, swallowed the pain, and behaved. But here, we suddenly discover courage in mobs. We are bullies.
2. Our outrage is selective. If Indian Railways cancelled hundreds of trains, it wouldn’t trend for 48 hours. Media doesn’t travel by sleeper class anymore. The railway passenger is reduced to the ‘cattle class’ stereotype. Empathy ends where discomfort begins for elites.
3. Those who failed in Indigo, DGCA, and the government remain unnamed. But the staff at the counters suffer public humiliation. These frontline workers didn’t design the system, didn’t cause the crisis, don’t have real answers nor in control of the situation nor have the solution. Yet they absorb every insult from entitled passengers. They deserve applause, not abuse.
4. Look at airfares during the chaos — Bengaluru return tickets crossed ₹1 lakh. That wasn’t pricing. It was profiteering. When systems collapse, the market becomes a vulture.
5. Before we crucify airlines, can we calculate how much money the government extracts through GST, fuel taxes, airport charges, and regulatory fees — versus what airlines actually retain? If someone did that arithmetic, the narrative would be very different.
This crisis didn’t just show operational failure — it showed who we really are as a society: entitled indoors, submissive abroad, apathetic to the invisible traveller, and blind to structural greed. The only people who walked out with dignity were the lowest-paid employees - the ones we shouted at.
~ Peri Maheshwar
Monopolies crumble when accountability is absent. The current aviation chaos is a wake-up call: Price caps must be enforced, guidelines must be respected, and the Indian passenger deserves the same protection as their global counterparts. Public interest must always supersede profit.
~ Shashi Tharoor
