IndiGo has vacated more than 700 slots at various domestic airports, following the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) curtailing the airline’s winter flights by 10 per cent after massive operational disruptions in early December, according to sources.
Slots refer to a particular time period allocated to an airline for takeoff and landing. Simply put, it is about operating flights at a given time.
Out of the 717 slots, 364 are from six major metro airports – Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad. Among these cities, most of the vacated slots are from Hyderabad and Bengaluru, the sources told PTI.
The vacated slots are spread over the January-March period. A total of 361 slots have been vacated for March, compared to 43 for February, and 361 for January.
Against this backdrop, the civil aviation ministry on Thursday asked other airlines to submit their requests for operating domestic flights on the slots vacated by IndiGo.
"IndiGo has submitted a list of 717 slots to the ministry, which it has vacated after the domestic winter schedule was reduced by 10 per cent in early December last year," one of the sources said.
The airline, which generally operates more than 2,200 flights daily, has trimmed the number of services following the DGCA directive aimed at preventing last-minute cancellations and ensuring operational stability.
As part of its winter schedule for 2025-26, IndiGo was allowed to operate 15,014 flights per week, which comes to 2,144 flights per day. A 10 per cent reduction has brought this down to 1,930 domestic flights per day.
For comparison, IndiGo operated an average of 2,022 flights a day during its summer schedule.
Between December 3 and 5 last year, IndiGo cancelled 2,507 flights and delayed 1,852 flights, impacting over 3 lakh passengers across the country.
Following the disruptions, DGCA reduced IndiGo's winter schedule by 10 per cent, meaning the airline had to stop operating services in various slots.
"Going by the slots vacated by IndiGo, it is clear that they can be operated by other airlines only till the end of March. After that, they might go back to IndiGo. No one can do the network planning at such short notice. No one is going to open a sector at such short notice, operate it only to close after a month," an airline industry executive said.
Another airline industry executive added that airlines might not be keen to take the vacated slots, as most of them are for red-eye flights. Red-eye flights refer to those operated late at night or in the early hours.
In its communication to airlines on Thursday, the ministry said the committee on redistribution of the vacated IndiGo slots held its first meeting on January 13, discussing the process and principles for redistribution.
Following the deliberations, the panel has now asked airlines to submit their requests and preferences for the vacated slots, subject to various conditions. As per the communication, airlines must send their requests to the airport operators concerned.
The final decision on redistribution will be taken by the operators. Among other conditions, interested airlines should not discontinue their existing routes to utilise the vacated slots.
On January 17, DGCA announced fines totaling Rs 22.20 crore for the December flight disruptions and warned CEO Pieter Elbers and two other senior executives for the lapses.
The watchdog also directed the airline to furnish a Rs 50 crore bank guarantee to ensure long-term systemic corrections.
On January 20, DGCA said the disruptions stemmed from mismanagement of adequate flight crew, inadequate regulatory preparedness at the operator level, and shortcomings in system software support, management structure, and operational control.