Slots vacated by IndiGo may receive lukewarm response from other airlines

The 10% slots that IndiGo has vacated are up for grabs, but there may not be many takers for them. The country’s largest airline by market share has vacated slots on non-premium routes, late night departures and low-traffic density sectors, making it almost unviable for other airlines to fly them.  

A senior airline executive says that IndiGo has meticulously planned its capacity cut, ensuring minimum financial and network impact. Air India, Akasa and SpiceJet may not find the available IndiGo slots lucrative enough to deploy new capacity.  

Besides, there are capacity constraints in terms of availability of aircraft and airlines would prefer to deploy their resources in high-demand sectors rather the non-premium ones IndiGo vacated.

During the company’s Q3FY26 earnings call Thursday, IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers did not share much, when asked about the schedule adjustment post DGCA order to cut 10% capacity following December 2025 fiasco.

He said there was capacity guidance from the DGCA that certain sectors should not be left and capacity adjustment was planned to minimise the impact on network. “Flights have been adjusted like where IndiGo was flying 5 times a day to 4 times a day now or 3 times a day flight cut to twice daily,” said Elbers.

Another airline executive said that none of the premium routes like Delhi-Mumbai has seen flight cuts by IndiGo. The cuts have happened on low-density routes, where some clubbing of flight operations have also happened which also improved load factor per flight on the sector.

There have been reports that IndiGo has surrendered mid night slots and replaced A320 operations with ATR on some tier 3 routes.

The Ministry of Civil Aviation has called upon airlines to submit their request and preferences to airports for IndiGo slots. However, it comes with a rider that preference shall be given to airlines that can demonstrate capacity in the form of additional aircraft, pilots, cabin crew, ground support equipment and maintenance engineers, and not merely a reshuffle of existing flights.   

“Akasa Air has a limited fleet, so they cannot mount additional flights to operate those slots. SpiceJet has its own challenges. I think Air India is unlikely to opt for these slots and rather focus on its own expansion for now,” said Ravreet Singh, an aviation analyst.