India, Dec. 5 -- When an airline cancels close to 600 flights in three days (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week and not counting delays), mostly because of its inability to meet new crew-rostering norms, and it then emerges that this comes on the back of 755 flights cancelled for the same reason in November, it is clear that something has gone horribly wrong - as it seems to have at IndiGo. The new Flight Duty Time Limit (FDTL) norms, long overdue, are in keeping with globally accepted standards, and, most importantly, were expected to kick in originally on June 1, 2024. After multiple deferments - at the request of airlines - they eventually went into effect from November 1. The numbers best tell the story of how India's largest domestic airline has adapted to the new norms. Poorly. To be sure, there is another trigger for the latest round of chaos - in this case, a software update for Airbus aircraft that disproportionately affects Indigo, which flies only Airbus - but underlying it is the larger issue of the airline's inability to maintain its existing schedule under the new rostering norms. The reason for this is not hard to pinpoint: IndiGo's famed cost optimisation. A pilots' body claimed as much in a letter to the aviation regulator, DGCA, amid the latest crisis, saying that "despite the two-year preparatory window before full FDTL implementation, the airline inexplicably adopted a hiring freeze, entered non-poaching arrangements, maintained a pilot pay freeze through cartel-like behaviour, and demonstrated other short-sighted planning practices". The price for all this is being paid by passengers. Pilots have also alleged the airline may be deliberately going slow in addressing the problem in the hope that the civil aviation ministry or the regulator will step in and relax the rostering norms. IndiGo has denied this, but if there is any truth in such claims, the airline is playing with not just the schedules of passengers, but given the cascading impact, on their safety too. DGCA, which should have taken the airline to task for its 755 FDTL-linked cancellations in November (over 25 a day; and given that the Indian aviation sector is mostly a duopoly, with IndiGo often being the only airline that services some Tier-II and Tier-III airports, this is a very worrying number), should step in now, review the airline's schedule ahead of the holiday season, and audit its staffing. It should also ensure adequate recompense for passengers and penalise the airline for its behaviour....