Aviation

The Horror Story It is the nightmare scenario. You are flying home for Diwali. You have your boarding pass. You arrive at the gate. And then you hear the announcement: “We are looking for volunteers to give up their seats for a voucher.” Why does this happen? Did their database fail? Did they double-book a seat by mistake? No. They bet against you, and they lost. The Economics of “Perishable Inventory” An empty seat is the most expensive thing on a plane. It consumes fuel but generates zero revenue. ...

The Observation We are witnessing an operational meltdown in Indian aviation. Flights are cancelled, pilots are exhausted, and passengers are stranded. The media is blaming the dense fog. But if you look closer, the fog was just the trigger. The gun was loaded by the new DGCA Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) norms introduced in January 2024. IndiGo, a machine built for precision, suddenly looked like it didn’t know how to run an airline. Why? Because the underlying logic of their resource allocation broke overnight. ...