Families slept on terminal floors and children cried after hours in queues as IndiGo’s network collapsed last week. Passengers faced missed weddings and lost wages, while staff suffered health tolls.
And now an insider’s viral letter has emerged which says this chaos was expected.
The letter, which the Telegraph Online has not independently verified, has been circulating widely online. Purportedly written by an IndiGo employee, the letter has accused the carrier’s top leadership of years of mismanagement, intimidation and fatigue-driven rostering that it claims led directly to the airline’s meltdown this month.
The allegations landed as the Directorate General of Civil Aviation issued a show-cause notice to IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers, citing “significant lapses in planning, oversight and resource management”.
The letter portrays a company built on pride that gave way to arrogance as IndiGo expanded into a near-monopoly.
“IndiGo did not collapse in a day. This downfall was years in the making,” the anonymous author writes, claiming repeated warnings were ignored as staff were pushed to exhaustion.
The letter states that pilots who flagged fatigue concerns were allegedly “humiliated” rather than heard. Ground staff, some paid as little as Rs 16,000 to Rs 18,000 per month, are described as running from aircraft to aircraft, doing the work of three people.
The letter singled out eight executives, including Elbers, operations head Isidore Porqueras, flight operations chief Ashim Mitra and operations control leader Jason Herter, alleging that foreign leadership were removed from employees and the reality on the ground.
IndiGo has not commented on the accusations. None of the officials named have responded.
The letter has surfaced against the backdrop of one of the worst operational collapses in Indian aviation. Since 2 December 2025, thousands of IndiGo flights have been cancelled or delayed, stranding lakhs of passengers and sparking chaos across major airports.
The immediate trigger was new Flight Duty Time Limitation (FTDL) rules meant to improve safety by enforcing longer pilot rest periods and stricter limits on night flying.
Airlines had nearly two years’ notice. Yet IndiGo’s lean staffing model left little reserve to accommodate the shift. The sudden spike in rest requirements exposed deep crew shortages, overwhelming its rostering systems and creating cascading delays worsened by weather and airport congestion.
The government stepped in with airfare caps, refunds by IndiGo has soared past Rs 800 crore and a PIL landed in court seeking passenger relief.
The viral letter also called on the government to intervene by setting minimum wages for ground staff, mandating minimum manpower per aircraft, rewriting fatigue rules with employee representation, and penalising operational negligence affecting passengers.
“We deserve better,” the author writes. “And so do you, the citizens who trust us with your time, money and safety.”
IndiGo says its board has activated a Crisis Management Group, according to a Moneycontrol report. Chairman Vikram Singh Mehta, director Amitabh Kant and Elbers himself are part of the real-time oversight team reviewing stabilisation efforts.
The airline insists normalcy will return by mid December.
