Flight cancellations affected 1.5 lakh people since December 2023: Data

Aviation industry in India faces crew shortage crisis, leading to mass flight cancellations and delays, impacting thousands of passengers.

Since December 2023, hundreds of cancellations and poor on-time performance of airlines have left thousands of people stranded at airports across India. Between March 31 and April 3 this year, 150 Vistara flights were cancelled and 200 flights were delayed by more than two hours. On May 8, Air India Express cancelled 90 of its 360 flights. Similar cancellations, though not at this scale, were recorded across many large airlines at various points this year.

The recent crisis to hit the aviation industry is fuelled by the unavailability of crew. In the case of Air India Express, about 200 cabin crew reported “sick”. In the case of Vistara too, crew unavailability was cited as the reason. There has been a mismatch between demand and supply of crew amid the expansion of the network.

The new troubles have come just as the aviation industry has started shrugging off the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in record losses for all airlines. During the first few months of the pandemic, in 2020, passenger flow came to a halt as airlines were grounded. In later months, passenger flow trickled in as airlines had to follow pandemic-related protocols. Despite that, airlines continued to pay salaries, airport fees, and aircraft and engine rentals and thus faced heavy losses. Later in 2022, when passenger flow returned to pre-COVID-19 levels, aviation fuel prices shot up. Airlines continued to suffer since passing on the fuel price to customers was not an option.

Chart 1 | The chart shows the cancellation rate of various airlines month-wise in the January 2022-March 2024 period. The bigger and darker the box, the higher the cancellation rate. 

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In January 2024, 5% of IndiGo’s flights, 3.4% of SpiceJet’s flights, and about 2% of Air India’s flights were cancelled. Even in the month prior, cancellations ranged between 1% and 2% for these airlines.

Chart 2 | The chart shows the number of passengers affected by cancellations.