On Dec. 18 2025 The Competition Commission of India (CCI) announced it has launched an enquiry into IndiGo following complaints it received against the airline over its conduct during the first nine days of December.
The CCI’s press release said,
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has taken cognisance of Information filed against IndiGo in the context of the recent flight disruptions witnessed in the aviation sector, across various routes. Based on the initial assessment, the Commission has decided to proceed further in the matter in accordance with the provisions of the Competition Act, 2002.
The CCI did not mention in its press release how many complaints it has received against IndiGo, nor did it give any explanation of which aspects the enquiry will focus on.
Competition Law and Market Dominance
According to the Competition Act 2002, the CCI examines anti-competitive agreements, abuse of dominant position by a merger and merger agreements. Section 4 of the Competition Act 2002 prohibits abuse of dominant position in the market. While the act does not prohibit dominance itself, exploiting such a position through unfair or predatory practices can attract penalties.
IndiGo controls more than 60% of India’s domestic market, 30% of the market is controlled by Air India and 10% is controlled by small Indian airlines like SpiceJet.
Reuters has claimed to have seen one such complaint filed against IndiGo by lawyer Kartikeya Rawal who alleged that his ticket was cancelled and the replacement fare quote was much higher. This complaint raises questions over whether IndiGo abused its dominant market position in the domestic market to unfairly increase prices at a time of crisis.
Not one, but two enquires
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has also launched a separate investigation into IndiGo’s operations and asked it to reduce it’s flight operations by 10% so that the airline’s operations can stabilise and cancellations be reduced.
IndiGo cancelled or delayed hundreds of thousands of flights over in the first nine days of December after it failed to comply with the new pilot rest and flight-duty time limitations (FDTL) rules by the deadline, which there were notified of over a year ago. All other airlines of India were able to comply with these new regulations and did not suffer the same fate as IndiGo.
These cancellations caused significant passenger hardship and chaos in many of India’s airports.
On Dec. 12, IndiGo had announced it has appointed a Chief Aviation Advisors LLC, led by Captain John Illson, to review and access its recent operational disruptions.
IndiGo’s Gesture of Care
On Dec. 21 2025, IndiGo announced that they are issuing an Indian Rupee 10,000 ‘Gesture of Care’ voucher to customers severely impacted or stranded by the cancellation of IndiGo flights from 12pm Dec. 03 until the end of day Dec. 5 in addition to the airfare costs already refunded to all passengers. From Dec. 26 2025 IndiGo will begin reaching out to customers on the identified flights to make arrangements.
Were you one of the passengers of any of these IndiGo flights? What was your experience like? Please let us know in the comments.
