Entertainment
Too big to fail? IndiGo crisis exposes risks in Indian aviation
A wave of flight cancellations by IndiGo, India’s largest airline, sparked a week of chaos and grounded tens of thousands of passengers, laying bare the risks of having a duopoly-like situation in the world’s fastest-growing aviation market.
For years, IndiGo with a 65% domestic market share has helped Indians realise their dreams of flying — an aspiration shared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who once said those “in slippers should also be seen in aircraft”.
The airline became the poster child of the nation’s aviation boom in recent years, with its promise of low fares and on-time performance.
But last week changed it all: IndiGo cancelled at least 2,000 flights because of a shortage of pilots after it failed to plan adequately for new rules limiting how many hours they work. That upended vacation plans, weddings and flooded social media with photos and videos of luggage piling up at terminals — scenes never witnessed in India’s aviation history.
IndiGo’s woes come at a critical time for the airline and the industry. Rival Air India, which commands a 27% market share and was owned by the government until 2022, has for years faced complaints of an ageing fleet and poor service, and is battling tighter scrutiny since a June crash killed 260 people.
IndiGo has said it hopes to return to normalcy in the coming days, but its troubles have drawn warnings from both politicians and aviation experts. The crisis has raised concerns about the risks of over reliance on a single carrier and whether the airline is really too big to fail.
The government stepped in swiftly, relaxing rules on pilot fatigue management to ease the disruptions. IndiGo has repeatedly apologised but has not disclosed financial losses from the crisis.
“IndiGo’s size has grown to the point where operational setbacks pose systemic risk,” said Harsh Vardhan, chairman of Starair Consulting.
If IndiGo or Air India get into “trouble, there will be mayhem in Indian aviation … the government needs to reduce jet fuel taxes and encourage more competition,” he added.
IndiGo’s dominance in India
Airline duopolies exist in a few countries, such as Australia and Canada. Even China, the world’s second most-populous nation, has three state-owned carriers, and several private ones.
India’s aviation market is not a duopoly in the strictest sense but analysts say that 92% market share of IndiGo and Air India – including its low-cost Air India Express – means it is a duopoly-like situation and creates vulnerabilities.
On many routes connecting smaller towns, IndiGo holds a monopoly.
“A country cannot grow robustly with duopolies, or effective monopolies, in any sector,” G.R. Gopinath, founder of now-defunct low-cost airline Air Deccan, wrote in a weekend editorial in the Economic Times newspaper.
Despite government efforts to expand airports and simplify operations rules, few carriers have succeeded. High taxes, fierce competition and supply-chain snags have driven airlines like Kingfisher, Jet Airways and Go First into bankruptcy in recent years.
IndiGo did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. On Sunday, it said it was on track to operate more than 1,650 flights and expressed confidence that operations would stabilise by Wednesday.
Rapid rise of IndiGo
Modi spoke of his ambitions for India’s aviation sector at the global airlines conference in New Delhi this year, but that vision mostly depends on IndiGo and Air India’s success.
About 174 million passengers travelled from and within India by air in 2024, 10% more than a year ago, International Air Transport Association data shows.
Founded in 2006 by Indian businessmen Rakesh Gangwal and Rahul Bhatia, IndiGo has grown rapidly. It now has a fleet of more than 400 aircraft, mostly Airbus A320s, and serves close to 380,000 customers a day through its more than 2,000 daily flights.
The airline is led by CEO Pieter Elbers, former chief of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
“This seems to be the lowest point in the company’s history. Disruptions are hurting the brand image,” said an IndiGo executive, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.
With $9 billion in revenues and $807 million in profits last fiscal year, IndiGo dominates India’s aviation sector. It will likely face a hit to its annual revenue due to disruptions — with customer refunds as of Sunday already touching $68 million, and set to rise.
But the bigger hit will be to its reputation, built over years by making punctuality a key selling point.
An IndiGo commercial on YouTube from 2011 had pilots and other staff singing in unison: “Every time we fly, we will ensure you will land on time.”
The carrier had an average on-time performance of 91.4% as recently as July – the best among Indian airlines at six major airports. However, on Friday, that figure plunged to just 3.7%.
The crisis is reminiscent of Southwest Airlines’ holiday season meltdown in 2022, which led to cancellation of 16,900 flights and stranded over 2 million passengers. Those disruptions cost the U.S. carrier at least $400 million in revenue.
The Traitors’ winner Rachel Duffy has shared a sweet yet emotional tribute to her mother, Anne.
Throughout the show, mother-of-three, 43, shared her plans for how she would use the prize money if she won ,by creating memories with her mum, who was tragically diagnosed with Parkinson’s at just 47 and spent her last few years with dementia.
Sharing the heartbreaking news on her Instagram on Tuesday morning, January 27, 2026, Rachel Duffy said she was “heartbroken” at the death of her “beautiful wee mummy.”
On Sunday, Rachel took to Instagram where she shared a montage of photos and an emotional message. She wrote: ‘Thank you Mummy, thank you for loving us so much.
‘Thank you for teaching us our worth. Thank you for so much kindness shown and taught. Thank you for endless laughs and lots of fun. Thank you for helping us parent our babies. Thank you for being a shoulder to cry on when we needed one.
‘Thank you for the many words of wisdom over the years. Thank you for showing us the true meaning of integrity. Thank you for giving us a beautiful life. Thank you for a lifetime of happy memories.
‘Thank you for being our mummy. We love you x’.
It comes after she won the BBC reality show The Traitors along with her fellow Traitor, Stephen Duffy.
Trevor Noah hosted the Grammys for a record sixth time after the show’s producer, Ben Winston, revealed ahead of the ceremony that he begged the comedian for his services.
“It got to December, and we hadn’t found anybody that we absolutely loved. I sent him a video, and I was literally, I was on my knees in this video, and I said, ‘Please look at this incredible lineup that we’ve got on the show — the only thing that’s missing is you,’” the producing executive admitted. “‘Come back and do one final year, it’s the last year on CBS, let’s make it your last year too.’”
While Noah generously accepted the offer, the ceremony ended up on Donald Trump’s radar due to the very hosting stint which Winston went all out for.
The American president denounced the Epstein joke which the Grammys host made at his expense and threatened legal action.
“The Grammy Awards are the WORST, virtually unwatchable! CBS is lucky not to have this garbage litter their airwaves any longer,” the head of state shared via his Truth Social profile.
Taking a dig at Noah, Trump continued, “The host, Trevor Noah, whoever he may be, is almost as bad as Jimmy Kimmel at the Low Ratings Academy Awards.”
“Noah said, INCORRECTLY about me, that Donald Trump and Bill Clinton spent time on Epstein Island. WRONG!!! I can’t speak for Bill, but I have never been to Epstein Island, nor anywhere close, and until tonight’s false and defamatory statement, have never been accused of being there, not even by the Fake News Media.”
For the record, Noah initiated his joke about Trump as he congratulated Billie Eilish for winning song of the year.
“There you have it, song of the year! Congratulations, Billie Eilish. Wow. That’s a Grammy that every artist wants, almost as much as Trump wants Greenland,” he said. “Which makes sense because, since Epstein’s gone, he needs a new island to hang out with Bill Clinton. I told you, it’s my last year! What are you going to do about it?”
Trump further listed George Stephanopoulos, host and former White House Communications Director, as someone he has successfully sued. While he told Trevor Noah to “get ready” because he plans to “have some fun” with him.
CEO Jensen Huang has rebuffed the reports claiming that Nvidia was considering retracting its fresh, enormous investment in OpenAI,
Nvidia is poised to make its “largest ever investment” in ChatGPT developer OpenAI, despite recent reports suggesting that the deal may be under threat.
Huang dismissed claims of dissatisfaction with OpenAI as “nonsense”.
While Nvidia CFO Colette Kress stated in December 2025 that the company had not completed a definitive agreement with OpenAI, some senior officials in Nvidia have indicated that an official agreement between the two companies would soon be finalised.
How much is Nvidia investing in OpenAI?
The Nvidia CEO did not disclose the exact amount of the investment but clarified that it would be “nothing like” the $100 billion figure mentioned in the partnership agreement signed in September.
“We will definitely participate in the next round of financing, because it’s such a good investment,” Huang told reporters at a press conference, as reported by Bloomberg.
Being the world’s most valuable company, Nvidia produces a considerable amount of hardware that powers tools like ChatGPT and Sora.
Another point of note is that Nvidia’s technology is crucial to the AI data centres that OpenAI is gearing up to invest hundreds of billions in across the US. These data centres are expected to consume as much electricity as India in the process.
Huang’s clarification on Nvidia’s OpenAI investment comes on the heels of a report from The Wall Street Journal earlier this week, which dubbed the deal “on ice.”
The Journal also reported that Huang had privately expressed concerns regarding “a lack of discipline in OpenAI’s business approach” and the increasing competition from competitors like Google and Anthropic.
Surprisingly, OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman also expressed competition concerns recently.
He announced in December a pause on other projects to focus on enhancing ChatGPT’s user experience, after Google’s Gemini 3 outperformed it in various benchmarking tests.
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