Global Pilot Body Warns India Against Relaxing Pilot Rest Rules Amid IndiGo Disruptions

December 2025 : India’s recent decision to ease stricter rules on pilot rest, following a surge of flight cancellations by IndiGo, has drawn strong criticism from the global pilot union group IFALPA, which warned that the move could compromise safety.

IndiGo, which commands roughly 65% of India’s domestic aviation market, faced widespread disruptions after failing to prepare adequately for a November 1 deadline that mandated stricter limits on night flying and weekly rest for pilots. The airline’s planning lapses led to at least 2,000 flight cancellations this month, stranding tens of thousands of passengers, disrupting vacation plans and weddings, and causing public outrage over lost luggage.

In response, India’s aviation regulator granted IndiGo a one-time exemption from the new night-duty rules and removed a restriction that had prevented airlines from counting pilot leave toward weekly rest requirements.

Captain Ron Hay, president of Montreal-based International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations (IFALPA), expressed serious concern over the decision. “We are informed that the change is due to staffing issues. This is troubling as fatigue clearly affects safety,” Hay said, emphasizing that the exemption was not grounded in scientific evidence. He warned that relaxing rest requirements could worsen pilot staffing problems, since challenging working conditions are a primary factor driving pilots to leave airlines in India.

India’s civil aviation ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside business hours.

Hay’s statement aligns with IFALPA’s ongoing push for a more specific global standard to combat pilot fatigue uniformly across regions. While the U.N. aviation agency’s current framework allows countries to determine duty-time limits using operational experience and scientific knowledge, this has led to significant regional variations. Europe and the United States are cited as having some of the most robust systems to ensure pilots get adequate rest.

Similar concerns have emerged elsewhere. In Canada, the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) criticized a proposed exemption by Transport Canada that would permit pilots to work up to 23 consecutive days without a mandatory weekly day off. “If adopted, we would have more pilots fatigued, more often, and with worse fatigue symptoms, all to the detriment of air safety,” ALPA Canada President Captain Tim Perry said. Transport Canada did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

Hay’s warnings underline the critical link between pilot fatigue and aviation safety, highlighting that short-term operational fixes, such as exemptions to rest rules, may have far-reaching consequences. As airlines worldwide grapple with staffing and scheduling challenges, IFALPA’s call for science-backed duty-time regulations seeks to ensure that safety remains the overriding priority.

The IndiGo crisis and India’s regulatory response have thus sparked a global conversation about balancing operational efficiency with adherence to fatigue management standards—a debate that experts say has implications not just domestically, but for international air travel safety as well.

(The content of this article is sourced from a news agency and has not been edited by the Mavericknews30 team.)