Too Big To Fail, Too Arrogant To Care?
So let’s get this straight: IndiGo Airlines cancels 1,000+ flights, strands 2 lakh passengers for 20+ hours without food or water, and the punishment is... a 2-month extension? The FDTL rules were notified in May 2024—that’s 20 months of warning! Air India complied. Akasa complied. SpiceJet complied. But IndiGo? They were busy ordering 350 new aircraft while ignoring “boring” safety regulations.
Captain G.R. Gopinath didn’t mince words: “Arrogance. Hubris. Irresponsibility.” He says IndiGo believed they were so big that DGCA wouldn’t dare enforce rules. And guess what? They were right! The regulator blinked first.
The ground reality? Tearful passengers sleeping on airport floors. An Indian Army officer with family stuck without notice. A man missing his daughter’s wedding. “ना खाना, ना दाना, ना पानी”—no food, no water, no humanity. Ground staff stood clueless while IndiGo’s website crashed.
Here’s the cherry on top: while passengers suffered, other airlines turned vultures—airfares hiked 6x overnight! Capitalism for the corporations, “adjust karo” for the aam aadmi.
And Air India’s response to the pilot shortage crisis? CEO Campbell Wilson wants a “no-poaching pact” in the name of “national interest”! This is from the airline that went on a 3-year poaching rampage, destroying Akasa’s operations. Free market when it suits them, protectionism when it doesn’t?
Ravish Kumar asked the real question: “जिस सरकार पर जनता की मांगों का असर नहीं होता, वह एक कंपनी के आगे झुकेगी?” A government deaf to public demands bows before a corporate monopoly?
February 10 is the new deadline. Gopinath says meeting it is “almost impossible.” Brace yourselves—this tamasha isn’t over!