[From Unsplash]

Editor's Note: This essay follows Part 1 of the two part series, “The Paradox of Excellence,” which examined how IndiGo’s internal operating logic — its strengths, instincts, and institutional habits — created the conditions for the December 2025 disruption. But a crisis of such magnitude does not remain confined within organisational boundaries. When a dominant airline falters, the effects radiate across an entire ecosystem. This second essay widens the aperture. It asks what responsible conduct looks like for an industry whose functioning depends not only on competition, but on shared stability, public confidence, and collective stewardship.

The December 2025 disruption at IndiGo was more than an operational incident. It was a systemic shock. A company that had, for years, been the gravitational centre of Indian aviation suddenly lost its rhythm. As flights were cancelled and schedules collapsed, the reaction did not remain contained within company walls. Airports overflowed. Alternative carriers surged. Regulators intervened. Digital platforms lit up. And passengers — millions of them — felt a sudden contraction of reliability in a system they had come to take for granted.

Aviation is one of the few industries where private enterprise and public utility intersect so tightly that the boundary dissolves. Airlines compete for customers, but the product they deliver — mobility — carries civic consequences. When a dominant carrier falters, its failure is not experienced as an internal breakdown. It is experienced as a public event.

In such moments, the instinct is to focus exclusively on the company at the centre of the storm. But a crisis of this scale reveals something more demanding: the behaviour of every actor around it. How competitors respond. How airports absorb pressure. How pricing signals behave under strain. How digital intermediaries shape choice and information. How regulators interpret the moment. And how the industry, taken together, holds or loses the public’s trust.

A Crisis That Exposed the Industry’s Hidden Interdependence

Aviation markets look competitive, but they operate on invisible forms of interdependence. Timetables must harmonise. Airspace must be shared. Ground infrastructure must flex. When everything functions, this interdependence masquerades as smooth, self-regulating efficiency. But when one large player misfires, the interdependence becomes visible — and vulnerable.

IndiGo’s collapse was a story not only of over-scheduled pilots and new fatigue limits, but of a system built on tight coupling. Aircraft rotations cannot easily be reassigned. Airport slots cannot magically expand. Ground handlers cannot instantaneously reconfigure capacity. And competing airlines, though eager to serve displaced passengers, operate under their own constraints of fleet, crew, and obligation.

The shock was therefore not simply operational. It was structural. It revealed that India’s aviation ecosystem lacked pre-agreed norms, protocols, and stabilisers for moments when the system strains. In such environments, the question becomes not who benefits, but who behaves — and how.

What Responsible Conduct Looks Like Under Stress

When a crisis erupts, actors often default to their competitive instincts. Price according to demand. Prioritise scheduled passengers. Direct capacity toward profitable routes. Protect the brand. These are rational behaviours in ordinary times. But crises create contexts in which rational behaviour can produce morally troubling outcomes.

The December 2025 disruption created scarcity that was not triggered by weather, geopolitics, or force majeure. It was triggered by institutional misalignment — a system stretched past its human limits. In such circumstances, pure market logic cannot fully address the ethical tension that arises when people make travel decisions under duress and pricing signals spike beyond reasonable thresholds.

Responsible conduct, therefore, does not require abandoning competition. It requires recognising when competition must temporarily coexist with stewardship.

Stewardship is not charity. It is the recognition that mobility, during moments of strain, is a form of public experience. The integrity of that experience depends not only on the competency of one airline, but on the maturity of an entire industry.

The Market Leader: Rebuilding Legitimacy, Not Just Operations

For the market leader, the crisis was not merely an operational failure. It was a collapse of authority. IndiGo faced a dual challenge: restoring its schedule and restoring legitimacy. The first requires competent operations; the second requires humility, transparency, and visible internal correction.

When a dominant player misfires, its responsibility is not only to its own passengers but to the system it anchors. Stabilisation must be swift, transparent, and grounded in recognition of what failed — not merely what broke. This is not public relations. It is duty. Without that recognition, the system remains vulnerable to repetition.

The Primary Challenger: Opportunity Wrapped in Obligation

For the primary challenger — in this case, Air India — the situation presented a paradox. A sudden surge in displaced passengers created commercial opportunity, but also reputational risk. Absorbing demand requires capacity, and capacity cannot be manufactured overnight.

The more important opportunity, therefore, was symbolic. In moments of system strain, challengers can demonstrate what kind of institution they are becoming. But symbolism cannot exceed capability. Overpromising risks operational breakdown; underresponding risks appearing indifferent. The most responsible actions are often modest but reliable: adding marginal capacity, clarifying availability, and avoiding opportunistic behaviour masked as responsiveness.

In such contexts, a challenger’s obligation is to behave with bounded ambition — enough to stabilise the system, not so much as to overreach.

Smaller Carriers: Limited Capacity, Real Responsibility

Regional and value-focused airlines operate with thin margins — of fleet, staff, and infrastructure. They cannot absorb mass displacement. They cannot conjure new flights or crews. Yet they hold a form of responsibility that is local but significant.

For these players, stewardship looks like transparency. Making clear what can be done and what cannot. Avoiding opaque, last-minute pricing behaviour. Facilitating stranded passengers where possible. Providing clarity early, not uncertainty late.

In an interconnected system, even small contributions to stability matter. A minor carrier that says “We will add one additional frequency for two days, and we will maintain fares within a defined band” contributes more to trust than a vague claim of support that cannot be operationalised.

Charter Operators and Wet-Lease Providers: The System’s Hidden Shock Absorbers

Charter operators, ACMI (aircraft, crew, maintenance, and insurance) providers, and wet-lease partners rarely feature in public conversations about aviation. Yet in moments of disruption, they become critical shock absorbers. They can provide additional lift, reposition crews, or supply capacity that is otherwise unavailable.

For this sector, stewardship requires readiness: the ability to respond quickly, the willingness to coordinate with airports and regulators, and the discipline to operate within safety and compliance frameworks even under time pressure.

Their contribution is not measured in public applause. It is measured in the system’s ability to heal.

Boundary Institutions: Platforms, Airports, Ground Handlers, and the Edges of Experience

Crises expose actors who usually remain invisible. Booking platforms decide how prices are displayed, whether refunds are frictionless, and whether stranded passengers are directed toward reasonable alternatives or exploited by algorithmic opportunism. Airports determine whether passengers experience dignity or disorder. Ground handlers determine whether baggage chaos overwhelms the system.

In December 2025, many passengers discovered that the difference between indignity and tolerance lay not only in the airline they had booked, but in the ecosystem around it. These institutions are often treated as passive infrastructure. In reality, they are frontline guardians of public experience.

Stewardship for them means preparing predictable passenger-care protocols, protecting frontline staff from unmanaged hostility, and coordinating extraordinary operations with clarity and discipline.

Regulators: Balancing Stabilisation and Autonomy

The regulator occupies one of the most difficult positions during a crisis: stabilise the system without paralysing it, enforce accountability without worsening disruption, and enable temporary flexibility without undermining long-term compliance.

Part of the strain arose from an expectation within IndiGo — shaped by past regulatory transitions — that the revised FDTL (Flight Duty Time Limitation) regime might be introduced with some degree of transitional flexibility. Indian aviation has, over the years, seen timelines evolve through consultation or phased adoption, and this history can quietly influence how organisations interpret regulatory intent. When the assumption did not hold, the adjustment became abrupt rather than gradual, intensifying the pressure on IndiGo’s operating model. It was a reminder that regulatory risk lies not only in compliance obligations, but in the assumptions leadership makes about how change will unfold.

In December 2025, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation faced a volatile landscape. IndiGo’s operational collapse had created systemic fragility. The temptation in such moments is either heavy-handed intervention or excessive restraint. The wiser path lies between: embedding oversight, pressuring for transparency, accelerating approvals for temporary relief capacity, and signalling that autonomy is contingent on responsibility.

Regulation, when done well, is not punitive. It is enabling.

What the Crisis Revealed About India’s Aviation Architecture

The December disruption held up a mirror to Indian aviation. It revealed that the industry is excellent at routine performance but immature at crisis stewardship. It excels at daily optimisation but lacks shared doctrines for collective response. It has capacity for individual ambition but insufficient norms for coordinated care.

The lesson is not that every airline must behave the same way. It is that every airline must behave in a way consistent with stewardship within its constraints.

A mature industry does not improvise its values in moments of pressure. It articulates them in advance — through pre-agreed crisis protocols, transparent capacity disclosures, ethical pricing guidelines, and passenger-care standards that are triggered during mass disruption.

Such protocols need not be anti-competitive. They are, instead, a recognition that certain shocks demand a temporary shift in operating mode: from competitive maximisation to coordinated stabilisation.

What A Playbook for Crisis Stewardship Could Look Like

A crisis playbook is not a set of heroic gestures. It is a portfolio of commitments.

For major airlines, this could include predictable handling of disrupted passengers, limited and time-bound restraints on opportunistic pricing, and honest disclosure of constraints.

For smaller carriers, it could mean clarity and fairness rather than exaggerated promises.

For airports, it could mean pre-designated care zones, structured communication protocols, and rapid reprioritisation of gate allocations.

For platforms, it could mean surfacing reasonable alternatives rather than incentivising panic purchasing.

For regulators, it could mean enabling temporary capacity without compromising safety, and insisting on visible accountability rather than symbolic reprimand.

The purpose of such a playbook is not to suppress competition. It is to prevent panic, indignity, and avoidable harm.

Stewardship as a Marker of Industry Maturity

Industries do not become mature because their leading firms become large. They become mature because their norms evolve. Because they recognise when individual ambition must be balanced with shared responsibility. Because they understand that in certain moments, the system’s credibility is worth more than a quarter’s revenue.

The December 2025 disruption was not simply IndiGo’s crisis. It was a test of Indian aviation’s collective maturity. It asked whether the industry could recognise its interdependence not only in daily operations but in moments of shock. It asked whether mobility — a public-facing experience — would be treated as a transactional product or a shared responsibility.

The test remains unfinished. But the direction is clear.

Competition and stewardship are not opposites. They are distinct operating modes. Mature industries understand when to switch modes explicitly, transparently, and temporarily — and when to return to competitive equilibrium.

A Crisis Is Wasted Only If Its Lessons Are

If the industry treats December 2025 as an anomaly, it will repeat it. If it sees it as a stress test of its norms, it will evolve.

The most valuable outcome is not whether one airline gained market share or another lost it. The valuable outcome is whether Indian aviation learns to reduce the distance between what it optimises for in ordinary times and what it stands for in extraordinary ones.

Stewardship is not the enemy of ambition. It is its adult form.

And that is how an industry grows up.