India’s aviation sector just endured a predictable disaster. The IndiGo crisis is no longer about only rostering software or pilot rest rules. It exposes the close ties between corporate power, political finance, and a state that fails to act clearly during emergencies.

By early December, new pilot duty rules and IndiGo’s miscalculation caused thousands of cancellations, poor on-time performance, and passengers sleeping at airports. The CEO apologised and promised stabilisation in days and normal operations months later. The government called it an “operational failure” and threatened action, but also quietly relaxed rules to help IndiGo recover. Lack of information led to wild rumours: some blamed an undeclared pilot strike, sabotage, or a ploy to weaken safety rules. The airline and authorities let speculation fill the void.

This pattern is familiar. For years, India’s aviation sector has treated crisis communication as unnecessary. In 2018, Jet Airways downplayed a flight emergency that left dozens injured. During the Vande Bharat repatriation in 2020, contradictory rules left returning citizens confused until public outrage forced clarity. A similar confusion occurs with rail accidents, hospital fires, and gas leaks: officials issue bland statements and avoid admitting errors. The IndiGo crisis just exposed this pattern to the middle class.

The anatomy of disinformation during this episode is a textbook example of how institutions react in any crisis. It starts with institutional silence and vagueness, IndiGo’s early talk of “operational reasons” and the ministry’s mentions of “planning gaps” and “misjudgment” mean little to a passenger holding a boarding pass and a screaming toddler. Next, images without context, shaky videos of crowded gates, angry passengers at counters, and pilots walking off aircrafts circulate, unanchored by any official narrative.

In this vacuum, three mutually reinforcing myths gain traction. First, some insist pilots are on an undeclared strike and “holding the country to ransom,” fuelled by selective briefings and those eager to vilify organised labour. Second, others claim IndiGo engineered the meltdown to blackmail regulators into diluting safety norms, a theory supercharged when rules were partially rolled back. Third, the episode is framed as part of a broader conspiracy to keep airfares high and alternative carriers weak, reflecting resentment about monopolies and crony capitalism.

A competent, transparent communications response from both the airline and the state, detailing timelines, clear causal chains, data on cancellations and staffing, and joint briefings with the airline, regulator, and pilots to answer hard questions, could have addressed most of this within a day. Instead, each actor managed its own slice of the story, leaving gaps that became fertile ground for rumour.

There is a reason that allegations about electoral bonds have stuck so quickly to this crisis. Within days of the meltdown, investigative reporting and opposition parties highlighted that IndiGo’s parent group had been among the largest purchasers of electoral bonds in the transport sector, with tens of crores flowing to multiple political parties in the runup to national elections. Publicly available bond data and subsequent disclosures showed sizable purchases linked to the company and related entities, with funds encashed not only by the ruling party but also by major opposition formations.

This matters for crisis communication for two reasons. It destroys the credibility of the state’s performative anger: when ministers promise “strict action” against a company that has bankrolled several major parties in recent years, citizens are entitled to ask who is disciplining whom. It also raises a deeper question: did an airline with a dominant market share, a history of generous political donations, and constant regulatory engagement receive leniency that would never be afforded to a weaker, less connected carrier?

Corruption and opaque finance are not abstract governance defects here. They are direct threats to air safety, just as they are to public health, education or sanitation. Regulatory capture can dilute crew rest rules, delay investment in air traffic management, mute whistle‑blowers and reward those who cut corners on maintenance or training. When the same business house can bankroll those who set the rules and then plead operational helplessness when those rules bite, the real safety risk is not the fatigued pilot alone but the fatigued democracy that lets this arrangement stand.

The most striking constant across these episodes is not technology but sociology. The public faces of aviation crisis management in India remain overwhelmingly powerful men who are rarely challenged inside their own systems. They are trained to talk to citizens, not with them. They can summon consultants to coach them in “empathy” yet still step to a podium and offer the same thin vocabulary of “strictest action”, “temporary inconvenience” and “lessons learned”, while mothers with infants are still queuing for food vouchers that never arrive. Crisis communication training in such an environment becomes cosmetic. It produces rehearsed body language and better‑designed slide decks, but it cannot overcome hierarchies that punish candour and reward those who minimise bad news. When senior men know that boards, party high commands and regulators will close ranks to protect them from meaningful consequences, every crisis becomes a rehearsal, not a reckoning.

Both the aviation industry and the Indian state have, in truth, learnt from past crises, but often the wrong things. They have learnt how to harden monopolies under the guise of market consolidation, how to invoke national interest to shield favoured players, and how to treat stranded citizens as acceptable collateral in the pursuit of growth metrics. What they have not learnt is the most basic discipline of democratic crisis management: tell the truth early, own what you control, and show your work on how you will fix it. The IndiGo meltdown is not a one‑off failure of an otherwise sound system; rather, it is an x‑ray of how air travel, political money and public communication now intersect in India. Until the bond trails are disentangled from the flight paths, until regulators are insulated from donors, and until crisis communication is treated as an instrument of accountability rather than a shield for impunity, the next wave of cancellations, rumours and “unforeseen” chaos is already taxiing for take‑off.

Sunoor Verma is the Honorary President of The Himalayan Dialogues and a specialist in global leadership and crisis communication. He writes in a personal capacity and his views are independent of his institutional affiliations. Details at www.sunoor.net.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

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