Daybreak - Indigo's stocks maybe flying high but passenger patience has hit turbulence

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

On 9 April, as the world reeling from the tariff standoff between America and China, one Indian company quietly made history.The stocks of InterGlobe Aviation, the parent company Indigo, India’s top budget airline, hit an all-time high. For a brief moment, Indigo wasn’t just India’s largest airline—it became the most valuable airline in the world. More than Delta even. Back home though, meanwhile, a different story has been playing out. Thousands of Indian flyers have been complaining online about broken luggage, rude crew, overbooked flights. When cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle tweeted his frustration about Indigo’s service, more than a thousand people replied to his tweet with their own horror stories.Has Indigo stopped caring about its passengers?But why would it? It flies nearly 9 million people a month. The clues, as it turns out, lie inside a grey building in Gurgaon that my colleague Rounak Kumar Gunjan visited recently. This is Indigo's training centre called iFly where hundreds of young trainees, often barely in their twenties, are taught how to serve tea at 30,000 feet.Tune inDaybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing and extensive post-production.

Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording. Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get an alert as soon as we release our first episode, please follow Intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. 9th of April, as the world was reeling from the tariff's standoff between America and China, one Indian company quietly made history.

The stock of interglobe aviation, the parent company of Indigo, India's top-budget airline hit an all-time high. For a brief moment, Indigo wasn't just India's largest airline. It became the most valuable airline in the world, more than Delta even. Back home, though, meanwhile, a different story has been playing out. Thousands of Indian flyers have been complaining online about broken luggage, rude crew, and overbooked flights. When cricket commentator, Harcha Boglea tweeted his frustration about Indigo's service,

more than a thousand people replied to his tweet within hours sharing their own horror stories. So has Indigo stopped caring about its passengers? But then why would it? It flies nearly 9 million of them every month. The clue, as it turns out, lies inside a grey building in Gurgaon that my colleague Ronak Kumar Gunjan visited recently. This is Indigo's training centre called I Fly, where hundreds of... of young trainees, often barely in their 20s, are taught how to serve tea at 30,000 feet. And then, IFLY is also used for those cabin crew members who are up for, say, a promotion.

So a promotion at Indigo can only have a cabin crew if they pass through the second and the third round of trainings and then they're supposed to take a test, etc. And then obviously they're sort of moved up the ranks. So, I Fly basically is a very important wing for Indigo because it acts as a training ground for new recruits. And it also acts as a sort of promotion slash training wing for the older and more experienced executives as well. Now, I Fly is also one of the pride of Indigo because they take a lot of effort in making sure that their executives and their cab and crew and the ground staff, etc. is trained a certain way and, you know, they are provided the state-of-the-art architecture

and infrastructure and all of those things for it. So Indigo sort of takes a lot of pride in IFLY and almost every executive that I spoke to, be it from Cape and crew, be it pilots, beat ground staff, all of them spoke very highly of I-Fly and the fact that the company takes it pretty seriously. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the camp. I'm your host, Nickda Sharma, and I don't chase the news cycle. Instead, every week, my colleague, Rahal Philipos and I will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Thursday, the 24th of April.

The show is right now in a league of its own. When it overtook Delta Airlines, even if it was for a short while, to become the most valuable airline in the world by market cap, it wasn't just impressive. It was historic. And yet, on the ground, Indigo is facing a crisis of a very different kind. Talk to anybody who has flown on the airline in India recently, and chances are that they have a complaint about Indigo. From overbooked flights and broken luggage to rude staff and indifferent service, the stories are everywhere.

They're in tweet threads, LinkedIn posts, Facebook runs, but on the surface, the numbers actually do not reflect this unrest. Officially, Indigo recorded just 0.2 complaints poor 1,000 passengers in the nine months that ended in February. This is double the previous year, but still a low figure. If we speak unofficially though, the discontent is everywhere. So what's going on? How does an airline become the darling of investors and the bane of passengers at the same time? The answer, like I mentioned earlier, is hidden in Gurgaon, home to eye-fly, Indigo's tree.

training academy where hundreds of fresh recruits are groomed every day. Cabin crew, ground staff, security personnel, they all pass through here. It is a well-oil system, but this system has seen some significant changes in the recent past. Indigo has radically changed its hiring strategy. So before the pandemic, about 10% of new hires in customer-facing roles were under the age of 20. now that number is closer to about 90%. This is straight by the way from senior trainers and executives that I spoke to. The emphasis is on fresh, out-of-school, enthusiastic recruits. And most importantly, Indigo wants to recruit those people who are ready to work for far less compensation.

The airline has also cut down salaries. Three years ago, for instance, a new cabin crew member could make up to rupees 80,000 to 90,000 per person. month, depending on their base airport. Those with experience earned even more, say, about rupees 1 to 1.25 lakh per month. Now, the same roles pay about rupees 60,000 to rupees 90,000. Experience doesn't really matter. Now it's just about saving money for Indigo.

Also, it's about keeping the workforce that, you know, won't really push back. Interestingly, lately this workforce is more and more being hired from India's smaller cities and northeastern states. Training centers in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities have become Indigo's go-to recruitment hubs. In one instance, three cabin crew members were recently hired from a university in Dhak Khati, which is a village in Punjab. Why? You see, employees from these areas are less likely to question the reduced pay and benefits. The airline has nearly stopped hiring crew

from Metro Cities altogether. But with younger recruits and shrinking paychecks come new challenges. For starters, the ability to handle difficult situations in flight has actually drastically dropped. As one senior trainer at I Fly put it, and I'm quoting, relatively older staff used to manage passengers better. There was more empathy and more maturity. Now, complaints are about rude or unresponsive staff, and one notorious example actually was a passenger who was on a flight to Delhi who complained about mosquitoes in the cabin.

A young crew member snapped back saying, You think I brought these mosquitoes from home, just sit quietly. Now, this kind of a response even a few years ago would have led to a disciplinary meeting. Now, nothing happens. And the issue is not just about youth or attitude. It's actually a story of exhaustion. Indigo staff is also dealing with flying fatigue. You know, their rest periods between long shifts have been cut down to the bare minimum

that is allowed by DGCA, which is about 12 hours or the length of the previous duty, whichever is more. But just think about it, right? When you're on your feet for 12 to 14 hours serving packed flights with no time to eat or even use the restroom, 12 hours isn't really enough, right? One crew member even told Ronak that they don't even get time to pee and when people are running on empty, aggression obviously builds up. This is also affecting relationships within the crew.

Earlier, smaller teams meant that you would fly with the same people regularly. Now, with more than 12,000 cabin crew on Indigo's roster and about hundreds joining and leaving each month, they actually may never see the same colleagues twice. Now, this kind of disconnect has consequences. Less camaraderie, more indifference, and no accountability. The internal systems also that are meant to provide feedback have not helped either. Employees told Ronuk that the company's weekly all-hands call, ironically titled Happy to Listen,

rarely results in action. Concerns about rest, food, hotels, and even basics like cup size on board is routinely raised. and ignored. Now, speaking of food, things have gotten stingier there as well. Deadheads, who are basically crew members flying without duty, used to be able to eat from the same airline buy-in menu for free. Now they have to carry their own food or rely on pre-booked sandwiches. Even if they eat from the onboard menu due to a shortage, they have to fill out a slip and explain to finance after landing. Hotels have been downgraded as well. Hortals have been downgraded as well. Where the crew members were once put up in a Taj or a J.W. Marriott, they now get

booked into Lemon Tree or Novital. Again, it's about cutting costs, but it is taking a toll on morale. Indigo's leadership, particularly CEO Peter Elbow's seems unbothered by the internal grumbling. Elbowers came from KLM and joined Indigo in 2022 with one mission, grow fast and grow it has. In the December quarter, the airline posted a net profit of over 2,000 crore rupees, which is its highest ever. It flew a record 31 million passengers and added new destinations like Jars Sogura and Raja Mundri and also ramped up its international ambitions. Destinations like Rome, Seoul, Tokyo and Bali are now on the radar. And the airline aims to raise international revenue from 10% to 40% in the coming.

years. It has also placed orders for more than 500 new aircrafts. So when those start arriving, expansion will accelerate even further. So from a shareholder's perspective, it is actually a dream come true. But from a passenger or employee's point of view, not so much. Right now, Indigo's grip on the Indian skies is near total. Tata owned Air India and Vistara are busy merging. Akasa is still too small, Spicejet is scaling back and passengers are left with almost no alternatives. So while they might be really angry, they will still keep buying the tickets. And that is the irony. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber-focused business news

platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-undi offerings. A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletter, and podcast extras. To subscribe, head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted by Snigda Sharma and edited by Rajiv Siyah.