The boss of India’s largest airline has resigned after months of scrutiny over the cancellation of thousands of flights in December.
Pieter Elbers “will be relieved from the service of the company effective close of business hours on 10 March 2026”, IndiGo said in a filing reported by NDTV.
Managing director Rahul Bhatia has been placed in charge in the interim, the airline said on Tuesday.
The airline, which controls roughly 65 per cent of the domestic aviation market, cancelled 4,500 flights in December in what was the biggest crisis in its 20-year history, with the delays affecting more than a million passengers. According to India’s aviation regulator DGCA, some 980,000 people were hit by flight cancellations and 640,000 were stranded at airports due to delays stretching beyond two hours.
The disruption continued for days and pushed fares unusually high on several routes.
The flight disruptions came amid a regulatory overhaul with the rollout of stricter work-hour norms for pilots and crew to enable better working conditions.
The new roster rules, known as Flight Duty Time Limitations, were implemented in two phases. The first was rolled out in July and the second on 1 November, drastically reducing the number of hours pilots and crew could fly.
Following the operational meltdown, the DGCA reprimanded Mr Elbers for "inadequate overall oversight of flight operations and crisis management” as the airline apologised for the extensive disruption from “misjudgement and planning gaps”.
The regulator later imposed penalties of Rs 222m (£12.43m) on the carrier and reprimanded several other executives as well.
Though IndiGo released Mr Elbers' resignation letter that cited "personal reasons" for his exit, Bhatia, the airline's co-founder who will take charge in the interim, referred to the cancellations in an internal memo he sent about his new role.
"What happened last December should never have taken place," he said in the email seen by Reuters. He also thanked employees for working tirelessly during the crisis.
Mr Elbers, a former KLM Royal Dutch Airlines executive who took charge of IndiGo in September 2022, faced intense pressure in the weeks following the mass cancellations as the crisis tarnished the carrier’s reputation.
The airline had become popular in India for its on-time performance and budget ticket prices. Under Mr Elbers, the airline had placed a large order for about 500 Airbus narrowbody aircraft and dozens of widebody aircraft from the European maker to expand its operations.
— IndiGo (@IndiGo6E) December 5, 2025
Earlier last year, he had shared the stage with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi, basking in IndiGo's role as the host airline for an aviation event.
IndiGo's shares have fallen 13.5 per cent this year, due to the financial impact of the cancellations and, more recently, disruptions arising from the conflict in the Middle East that had led to large portions of the airspace in the region being shut, compounding the impact from an airspace ban imposed by Pakistan.
IndiGo has 440 aircraft in its fleet and operates mostly domestic flights. However, it also flies to foreign destinations like the UK and the Middle East.
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