Grounded by greed! Why India’s low-cost dream Is now flying on fumes

Raju Korti
I have watched the arc of Indian aviation from the swagger of early privatisation to today’s turbulence and it is impossible to escape one conclusion: the low-cost dream that took off with fanfare in the late nineties is now sputtering on its last fumes. Kingfisher, Jet Airways, East West, Damania and Go First all went bust and each collapse was wrapped in a different excuse but the underlying reason was the same, irrational economics dressed up as innovation. Air India, retaken from the Tatas, is still reeling and remains trapped between legacy fatigue and the trauma of that recent London-bound crash. IndiGo holds sway not because it is exceptional but because everything around it has collapsed. Once a competitive field, the sector is now a duopoly masquerading as choice and that is the real story.

The recent disruption where IndiGo virtually threw the government, passengers and the entire aviation ecosystem under the bus was not an operational blip but calibrated muscle flexing. When flights were cancelled en masse, when delays piled up and when thousands of travellers were stranded, it looked suspiciously like orchestration to force the government to dilute roster guidelines, and the tactic worked.

(Pic representational)

This government does not normally take blackmail lightly but this time it blinked. The rollback of the new crew duty and rest norms was a concession that signalled something far more troubling than administrative weakness. It told every dominant player in a vital sector that scale can be weaponised against the state. It also amplified the larger anxiety that IndiGo’s control of over sixty percent of the domestic market and dominance across major terminals has given it a chokehold over regulators and passengers alike.

The truth is unpleasant but unavoidable. DGCA has been slow, reactive and too ready to adjust its stance when pushed. The so-called transition period was not an act of prudence. It was capitulation dressed as pragmatism. Pilot bodies had warned that IndiGo had frozen hiring and relied on non-poaching pacts instead of preparing for the rule change. The predictable chaos that followed was then deployed as leverage. In the end the regulator backed off and passengers paid the price.

But the rotten core of the sector is not regulation alone. Everything comes back to ticket pricing and surge pricing practices that have turned flying into an extortion racket. A seat that costs four thousand can jump to forty thousand within minutes. Refunds vanish behind invisible deductions. Cancellations read like they were drafted by Nigerian scam artistes. And while corporate travellers now count pennies, the rural and small-town flier who has entered the market in large numbers is willing to pay for reliability. That reliability simply does not exist and the airlines know they can behave with impunity because demand will keep coming.

IndiGo’s recent internal revolt only sharpens the edges of this story. Pilots writing a blistering open letter accusing the management of greed, claiming the airline believes it is too big to fail, exposing ground staff making eighteen thousand rupees while doing the work of three people and even mocking a seventy-year-old leader who refuses to retire is not mere dissent. It is a rebellion from the cockpit and proof that the operational chaos outside is mirrored by structural decay within. A company cracking from inside is the last entity that should be running most of India’s skies.

The government’s instinct now should not be to merely crack the whip but to redesign the rules of the game. Pricing bands must be clearly defined. Arbitrary spikes must stop. The base price may rise but predictability will return and that is far healthier than randomness masquerading as free market logic. DGCA must grow a spine because soft regulation in a market dominated by one player is not neutral, it is dangerous. And the government must engage Indigo without fear or favour because the airline’s temporary victories will cost it heavily if the state finally decides it has had enough.

What remains constant is this: in every round of confrontation between airlines, regulators and governments, the flyer loses. The low-cost revolution promised democratisation of travel but delivered instability, opacity and the unchecked arrogance of dominant players. Unless the system is rebuilt around transparency and accountability, the dream that once lifted millions into the air will remain permanently grounded.