IndiGo turmoil exposes India’s aviation crisis! Despite 30% hiring, training bottlenecks, attrition hurt airlines

India's aviation industry is entering one of its most strained phases in recent times--not because the financials look shaky, but because the system can no longer keep pace with the country's swelling demand for air travel.

Nowhere is the strain more visible than at IndiGo--the carrier that commands 60% of India's domestic skies.

While the government has relaxed new rostering norms for IndiGo, it has failed to field enough flights, exposing a fragile hiring ecosystem stretched thin by regulatory whiplash and rapid growth. The carrier has cancelled thousands of flights in recent weeks, showcasing how deeply it is struggling to rebuild operational capacity.

According to Shailesh Khanna, Brand Lead, ManpowerGroup India, IndiGo's staffing number has expanded dramatically, crossing 5,000 pilots and more than 11,000 cabin crew this year. The airline has also resumed hiring type-rated captains and senior first officers for its Airbus A320 fleet. Yet the recovery of its schedules remains halting and slow.

The hiring scramble extends far beyond one airline. Industry experts have noted that India has been experiencing an aviation recruitment surge since the COVID-19 pandemic, as carriers across the board have accelerated fleet expansion and introduced new routes.

Khanna told Storyboard18 that Air India now employs an estimated 6,350 pilots, while Air India Express has 1,592. Newer entrant Akasa Air operate with leaner teams, with government data showing roughly 466 pilots across the six major airlines combined as of 2025.

Storyboard's requests for updated hiring figures from SpiceJet, IndiGo and Air India went unanswered.

However, talent research firm Foundit told that the pilots' hiring grew from 11% in 2024 to 18% this year, with expectations of crossing 21% in 2026. Ground staff recruitment has climbed even faster, rising from 14% to 21% in the same period, while cabin crew hiring jumped from 17% to 23%. Foundit estimates that the sector is now approaching its most aggressive hiring cycle to date, with recruitment projected to climb 15 to 30%vacross critical job categories.

Anupama Bhimrajka, VP, Marketing, foundit attributed the demand not only to aggressive aircraft orders but to the transformation of India's airport map. Dozens of new terminals and routes have emerged under the country's regional connectivity and greenfield airport programmes, pulling in new ground operations, security teams and turnaround specialists.

"The rapid scale-up of Tier-2 and Tier-3 airports under the UDAN and greenfield airport initiatives has significantly increased the requirement for ground operations, security staff, and turnaround teams," she said.

Even as airlines hire at a pace unmatched in a decade, they are confronting a persistent truth--India simply cannot train pilots fast enough. With fewer than 35 service simulators for more than 12,000 active pilots, recurrent checks and command upgrades remain bottlenecked, as per Foundit Insights tracker data.

"Pilot recruitment remains the most difficult challenge for airlines because the inflow of trained pilots is far slower than the pace of fleet expansion, and the cost of training continues to deter new talent", said Anil Agarwal, Founder of Incruiter.

Dr Nipun Sharma, CEO, TeamLease Degree Apprenticeship, highlighted that global hiring and cross-border talent movement are also becoming part of the equation, with some Middle Eastern or Southeast Asian carriers onboarding expatriate pilots and engineers while Indian talent continues to migrate overseas for roughly 25 to 40% higher pay, lifestyle advantages and faster promotions.

Attrition, particularly among ground staff and consumer-facing roles, has also mounted as long hours and high-intensity operations take a toll. The Cabin crew turnover has also climbed as younger staff seek better work-life balance.

Airlines have begun rethinking how they structure their workforces. Several carriers are investing in leadership development, transparent progression paths, and workplace culture reforms to stem the attrition. Yet the fixes are slow.

Operational stability, executives acknowledge, will require deeper changes: thicker buffers in crew rosters, recalibrated night-flight ratios, and more resilient operations control centres capable of forecasting disruptions and stress-testing schedules.

Meanwhile, the industry is being reshaped by an influx of artificial intelligence. Khanna told Storyboard18 that airlines are deploying AI to predict crew fatigue based on weather and circadian rhythms, analyse flight-data patterns for safety deviations, automate passenger and baggage processing, and customise pilots' training based on simulator performance.

Demand for tech-augmented aviation rules--from predictive maintenance engineers to digital-twin specialists--has risen sharply, with foundit reporting a 32% jump in tech-integrated roles and nearly 30% growth in AI-assisted operational jobs over the past year.

"We are seeing predictive maintenance, smarter crew planning, AI-assisted training, and automated customer support already making day-to-day work more efficient. Add to this the impact of AR/VR, blockchain, big data and machine learning will transform everything from aircraft monitoring to check-ins and baggage handling," said Aditya Narayan Mishra - MD and CEO of CIEL HR.

The crisis at IndiGo has made one thing clear: India's aviation sector is growing faster than its personnel pipelines, regulatory agility, and training infrastructure can support.

As air traffic surges in the country, that challenge is no longer expansion, but endurance.

"In the short term, airlines will have to do both: expand critical hiring and restructure how teams are planned and deployed. That means building more buffers into pilot and cabin crew rosters, re-examining the ratio of night operations to available crew, and strengthening operations control centres with data and scenario-planning capability," Sharma added.