IndiGo vacates over 700 slots at domestic airports after DGCA's 10% cut order

Aviation elephantine IndiGo has vacated implicit 700 slots astatine home airports including Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai. The determination follows a 10% simplification successful IndiGo’s wintertime formation schedule, ordered by regulatory watchdog DGCA, aft terrible operational disruptions successful aboriginal December that affected thousands of passengers.

Slots is simply a circumstantial clip play allocated to an hose for takeoff and landing. Of the 717 slots vacated, 364 are astatine six large metro airports: Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Hyderabad and Bengaluru relationship for the largest stock of the vacated slots, according to sources cited by PTI. The slots vacated span crossed January done March, with January and March seeing the highest numbers astatine 361 each, portion February has 43 slots vacated. Earlier connected Thursday, the civilian aviation ministry invited different airlines to petition the usage of these slots. "IndiGo has submitted a database of 717 slots to the ministry, which it has vacated aft the home wintertime docket was reduced by 10 per cent successful aboriginal December past year," 1 root said.Usually, the hose operates implicit 2,200 flights a day, but scaled backmost services to comply with the DGCA directive aimed astatine reducing last-minute cancellations and improving operational stability.

Under its 2025-26 wintertime schedule, IndiGo was permitted 15,014 play flights, averaging 2,144 daily. The 10 per cent chopped has reduced this to 1,930 flights per day. For comparison, the hose operated astir 2,022 flights per time during its summertime schedule. In aboriginal December, IndiGo faced large disruptions, cancelling 2,507 flights and delaying 1,852, impacting much than 300,000 passengers. Following this, DGCA trimmed the airline’s wintertime schedule, prompting the merchandise of the slots.