When aviation industry veteran Pieter Elbers stepped into IndiGo’s corner office in 2022, he inherited an airline that was unusually stable for a sector better known for volatility. The airline was efficient, flights consistently took off on time and its financials behaved as if exempt from the usual laws of aviation—those same laws that once led Warren Buffett to quip that durable competitive advantage in this business has “proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers”.
Elbers came from KLM, the Dutch flag carrier, where he had spent nearly three decades rising through the ranks. At IndiGo, he was hired to expand international operations of the airline which was the closest thing the aviation world had to a lean-mean machine. Built on a ruthless focus on costs, efficiency and on-time performance, it had done what few carriers anywhere had managed: Remain profitable while steadily expanding in a sector littered with bankruptcies. As Jet Airways collapsed, Kingfisher Airlines drifted out of the sky and others bled cash, IndiGo kept adding aircraft and opening new routes.
The situation grew so severe that the government granted IndiGo a temporary exception to the rules, underlining the scale of disruption and the airline’s systemic importance. Even as operations have stabilised, the reputational fallout is worsening, especially after IndiGo’s reaction to the crisis.
Vandana Singh, chairperson of the aviation cargo wing at the Federation of Aviation Industry in India, calls IndiGo’s response “truly lacklustre”.
“There’s neither shame nor a real apology in it. And their reply to the show-cause notice is just as absurd. They’ve had the audacity to blame everything and everyone but themselves. Asking for 15 days to submit a root-cause analysis is unreasonable. The answers lie within their own systems and culture; if they genuinely look inward, it shouldn’t take long to identify what went wrong. I’m still waiting for real ownership—from the leadership and the board,” she says.
Three years into the new job, Elbers finds himself at a moment that will define his leadership: He must rebuild trust, confront the cultural and operational gaps exposed by the crisis, and prove that an airline long held up as an exemplar can still live up to its own myth.
First Published: Dec 26, 2025, 12:03
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