Over 5,700 flights of major Indian airlines had to be cancelled in the first six months of the 2025 due to geopolitical issues and regulatory problems, according to data shared by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) in the Rajya Sabha on Monday. Over the past few months, geopolitical tensions—including the four-day military conflagration between India and Pakistan in May and the Iran-Israel conflict—had led to disruptions for Indian airlines, including a super-normal level of flight cancellations.
The closure of Pakistani airspace for Indian airlines is still in place, and continues to impact west-bound international flights of Indian airlines. A large number of domestic flights operating to and from sensitive airports in northern and western India were cancelled during Operation Sindoor in May as civilian aircraft operations at these airports—mostly defence airfields—were suspended during the conflict.
The flight cancellation data was shared by Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol in response to a question in the Upper House. The data did not mention how many of the 5,706 flight cancellations were due to geopolitical issues and how many were due to regulatory issues.
Indian Airlines
The country’s largest airline IndiGo—with 3,274 flight cancellations—accounted for around 57 per cent of the total cancellations in January-June, followed by the Air India group—Air India and Air India Express—with around 26 per cent, or 1,468 flight cancellations. With 401 flight cancellations, SpiceJet accounted for 7 per cent of the total cancellations during the six-month period, while Akasa Air accounted for 1.1 per cent with 64 flights cancelled. Government-owned regional airline Alliance Air had 499 cancellations, or 8.7 per cent of the total.
In all, the 5,706 cancellations across IndiGo, Air India group, Akasa Air, SpiceJet, and Alliance Air accounted for 1 per cent of the total flights of these airlines in the January-June period. The total number of departures for these airlines in the first six months of the year stood at 5,72,079, the data showed.
“Airlines incur costs due to delays and cancellations, including additional fuel, crew overtime, maintenance, airport fees, and rebooking expenses. Further, Airlines are required to provide refunds or compensation to passengers for cancellations or significant delays. Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January-June 2025 registered a growth of 7.34 % as compared to the corresponding period of the previous year,” Mohol stated in the written reply.
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