IndiGo Flight Cuts Take Effect: MoCA Redistributes Airport Slots to Other Airlines

The Centre has started to redistribute 10% of IndiGo's flying operations, making a temporary reorganisation of the Indian aviation sector inevitable. The Ministry of Civil Aviation has earlier restricted IndiGo, reassigning 717 slots to other local carriers. The MoCA-imposed limitation is being implemented in a phased and systematic fashion. In order to minimise passenger disturbance, authorities act quickly to fill capacity shortages on high-density lines. Let’s find our core reason why MoCA is doing so..

MoCA Redesigning India’s Aviation Sector

Redistributing IndiGo's limited operations among other domestic airlines is the responsibility of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. According to media sources, the redistribution is concentrated on routes where IndiGo runs a disproportionately large number of flights, especially on sectors with strong demand and frequency. IndiGo's total number of destinations will remain unaffected by the change.

Rather, the change focuses on certain routes where carriers may share capacity more fairly. Between January and March, 717 IndiGo slots were released as part of the exercise. Every flight that has been curtailed is at a domestic airport. There are about 59 slots at Delhi, 12 at Mumbai, 51 at Kolkata, 52 at Chennai, and 29 at Ahmedabad, among other airports. In order to preserve overall flight availability, these slots are currently being redistributed to other Indian operators.

IndiGo’s Dominance Continues                  

India's skies are still dominated by IndiGo despite the limitation. It currently operates about 2,200 flights on both domestic and international networks. Officials emphasised that the allocation is not a punitive measure but rather a regulatory balancing exercise. The action was taken in order to maintain competition in the aviation industry and guarantee equitable access to capacity.

As airlines modify their timetables and place planes on the newly available slots, the redistribution process is anticipated to continue over the upcoming weeks. Six major airports—Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad—accounted for 364 of the 717 open spots. According to industry sources, the largest number of these metros are Hyderabad and Bengaluru, which reflects deeper schedule cutting at high-density hubs.

Executives in the sector are still wary, though. Many of the open slots are on red-eye flights, which are late-night or early-morning flights. Additionally, because they might switch back to IndiGo in the upcoming scheduling cycle, airlines are hesitant to modify their networks for slots that are only accessible until the end of March.