IndiGo will soon inform the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) whether it can continue operating more than 2,000 flights per day after February 10.
From February 10 onwards, the airline will no longer be exempted from the aviation regulator's new Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) rules for pilots operating A320 aircraft.
If the airline tells the DGCA—likely on Monday—that it cannot handle operating more than 2,000 daily flights under the FDTL, the authorities are expected to intervene with capacity cuts, as per a Times of India report.
The aim of the capacity cuts would be to avoid a repeat of the IndiGo crisis of December 2025, which saw large-scale disruptions of flights over many days, and left more than three lakh passengers stranded at airports across the country.
This led the DGCA on Saturday to impose a penalty of Rs 22.2 crore on the airline, as part of a four-member probe into the events of December 3-5 by the Union Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA).
The total penalty of Rs 22.2 crore includes a one-time penalty of Rs 1.8 crore for six instances of non-compliance with Civil Aviation Requirements (CARs), as per a DGCA press note on Saturday night.
These included failures in effectively implementing FDTL norms and management issues.
The Rs 22.2 crore figure also includes a daily penalty of Rs 30 lakh for 68 days of non-compliance, in addition to a bank guarantee of Rs 50 crore.
However, the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP), a body that represents pilots, has dismissed the fine as "peanuts", and has claimed that the DGCA probe only accounted for three days of IndiGo flight disruptions, while the real crisis lasted longer.
“Issuing a warning letter after a massive disruption of this scale is a joke, like the fine amount ... Does it mean that non-compliance of the law can be traded with a penalty?” questioned FIP chief, Captain C.S. Randhawa, as per the report.