IndiGo’s Turbulence Is Not Just Operational. It Is Reputational.

There is a peculiar truth about modern travel. Aircraft fly at 35,000 feet and reputations fall at the speed of a WhatsApp forward. IndiGo’s current turbulence proves this once again. Traditional media can report a delay. Social media can turn that delay into a morality tale involving human suffering, a distraught yelling foreign national climbing the airline counter, soggy sandwiches, crying infants, philosophical despair and a shaky camera angle. This imbalance has brought more sorrow to the IndiGo brand than any technical issue.

The airline’s full-page apology was sincere. I said that in my LinkedIn post 2 days ago. It was clean and unambiguous. It avoided the usual corporate trick of saying “inconvenience is regretted”, which is the corporate equivalent of a shrug. Apologies have value but are only an opening act. They cannot fix the missing pilot, the petrified crew, the confused announcement, or the sudden cancellation that turns a passenger into a philosopher.

IndiGo’s problems are not dramatic. They are repetitive. A delay, an argument, a video, a trending hashtag, a statement, a new excuse and then the whole cycle begins again. It feels like a long-running television serial where the plot never changes but the actors look increasingly tired. Passenger patience is thinner than ever and airline staff appear exhausted. The combination is highly flammable.

My PR years taught me that recurring crises are never about the crisis. They are about the operating culture. IndiGo once had an almost boring level of discipline. People admired the monotony. Flights took off. Flights landed. Seats were reasonably clean. Crew were alert. The brand behaved like a polite but firm schoolteacher who arrived on time every day. Something in that rhythm went missing.

Passengers today expect clarity. Most of them accept weather issues and air traffic congestion. They even accept the occasional missing crew member.

They do not accept silence. They cannot stand the phrase “Please wait, we are checking”. Once that phrase is uttered, the video camera turns on, the frustration becomes content and the airline becomes a trending cautionary tale. This is not the era of patience. This is the era of public documentation.

I was at Pune airport dropping a friend for his flight to Bengaluru. A highly dignified senior couple waited for four hours. They had been told their Bengaluru flight would depart “shortly”. Shortly became an hour. An hour became two and rhree and four. No one updated them. They finally walked up to the counter only to be told the aircraft was still in Mumbai. The gentleman looked at me and said, “This wait has lasted longer than my honeymoon.” He smiled politely and sat down again. He deserved better.

While there, someone told me that a woman travelling for a medical check-up was sitting inside, whose flight was cancelled with a text message that arrived after she had already passed security. She received no guidance, no timeline and no human voice. She was sitting quietly on those shiny steel benches near the departure gates, waiting for someone to appear. Her story did not make it to social media. Many such stories do not. They are not dramatic enough to capture the internet’s attention. They are only quietly tragic.

IndiGo’s challenge is not public anger. That fades. The challenge is erosion of trust. When your brand is built on punctuality and discipline, you cannot afford public uncertainty. A single failure hurts more when it contradicts your strongest promise. Passengers do not measure you against competitors. They measure you against who you used to be.

I worked on crisis templates in Dubai and learned a principle that I wish some Indian brands would tattoo on their office walls: Do not apologise until you know what exactly failed, what exactly you are fixing and by when the fix will be delivered. Anything less is performance art. It draws applause but fixes nothing. IndiGo’s apology was necessary. The follow-up will decide whether it restores credibility or becomes another decorative gesture.

Social media has changed the crisis landscape entirely. A five-second clip of a frustrated passenger can override a carefully prepared press release. A misinformed tweet can destroy a day of peace in your corporate office. A sarcastic meme can travel across the country before your crisis team even gets to office. The power balance has tilted. Companies no longer control their own narrative. They only manage the damage.

The pattern is simple. A small incident occurs. Staff are under-informed. Passengers get very angry. Someone records it. Someone posts it. Anonymous accounts amplify it. Journalists pick it up. Analysts comment. Influencers add unnecessary spice. The airline issues a statement. The public dismisses it as late. The brand bleeds quietly. This has happened so many times that even neutral travellers approach IndiGo gates with suspicion.

There is still hope. IndiGo has the scale, the muscle and the talent to recover. The brand is not broken. It is simply out of sync. It needs to return to the qualities that built its reputation: Consistency. Clarity. Firmness. Discipline. These are not glamorous qualities. They do not make for glossy advertisements. They make flights take off on time. That is what people ultimately pay for.

Here is a free, unsolicited list of what IndiGo can do to regain altitude.

• Fix internal communication first. Frontline staff are the brand. If they say “I have no information”, that single sentence destroys more goodwill than any crisis statement can repair.

• Empower the uniform. Staff must not look frightened of giving updates. They must not behave like they are waiting for permission to speak. Airline credibility is delivered by confident human beings, not by advertisements.

• Improve operational systems. Adhere to DGCA regulations. Rostering, crew scheduling, aircraft readiness, baggage flow and gate coordination need renewed discipline. Apologies do not compensate for system fatigue. 

• Share timelines quickly. People tolerate delays if they know the cause and the time required. They do not tolerate vague reassurances.

• Accept what is visible. Denial in the age of social media is foolish. It only invites ridicule.

• Publish progress. If refund timelines improve, showcase it. If on-time performance climbs, share the numbers. People respond to evidence.

• Stabilise culture. An airline that is always firefighting will never deliver punctuality. Staff morale is quietly linked to passenger experience.

• Resist the urge to oversell recovery. Improvement is not an advertising campaign. It is an everyday act performed by thousands of employees whose names will never appear in your annual report.

I hope IndiGo succeeds. I say this not as a columnist. I say it as a traveller, a customer and a Punekar who judges brands by whether they arrive when they promise to arrive. India does not want drama in the sky. India wants flights that take off at the time printed on the boarding pass.

A reliable airline is a country’s quiet pride. IndiGo can return to being that pride. It only needs to rediscover its own discipline.