The government on Thursday, January 22, 2026, has asked other airlines to submit requests for the domestic flight slots vacated by IndiGo. This follows a 10% cut in IndiGo's winter schedule after massive December flight disruptions. Between December 3 and 5 last year, IndiGo canceled 2,507 flights and delayed 1,852, affecting over 3 lakh passengers across India. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) responded by cutting IndiGo’s winter flights by 10%, freeing up many slots. The Civil Aviation Ministry said a slot redistribution committee met on January 13 to discuss the process. Airlines now must send their slot requests to airport operators. However, airlines wishing to take IndiGo’s slots cannot drop their existing routes, the ministry said. An industry expert noted, "No one [airline] wants to take their [IndiGo’s] slots. They are not leaving anything except the red-eye flights, which no one wants to take. At the most, they are leaving one flight from a station where they have six flights. No one, in fact, is interested in insignificant slots." IndiGo, India’s largest airline, runs over 2,000 flights daily. Regarding December’s chaos, DGCA fined IndiGo ₹22.20 crore on January 17 and warned CEO Pieter Elbers and two senior officers. The airline was also ordered to provide a ₹50-crore bank guarantee for long-term improvements. DGCA blamed the chaos on poor crew management, lack of preparation, system software issues, and a focus on maximizing resources at the cost of operational safety. It said, "Crew rosters were designed to operate at the limits of permissible duty periods, with increased reliance on dead-heading, tail swaps, extended duty patterns, and minimal recovery margins." On January 22, IndiGo reported a 78% profit drop to ₹549.1 crore for the quarter ending December 2025. Higher expenses, new labour laws, and currency movements hurt profits despite increased revenues.