Nearly half of Hyderabad’s air travellers say they have faced service issues with IndiGo in the past year, with the city reporting worse dissatisfaction levels than the national average in key areas, according to new survey data released on Thursday (December 4, 2025).
In Hyderabad, 49% of respondents said they had encountered problems with IndiGo’s timeliness over the last 12 months. Dissatisfaction was even higher when it came to staff attitude and courteousness, with 58% of Hyderabad flyers flagging concerns, well above the national average of 54%, making Hyderabad one of the cities with the sharpest criticism of airline staff conduct.
A further 40% reported issues with information timeliness and transparency. The findings are based on 2,942 responses from Hyderabad alone, forming part of a wider LocalCircles survey that received over 15,000 responses from airline passengers across 301 districts in India.
At a national level, the LocalCircles survey indicates that dissatisfaction with IndiGo has risen sharply over the past year. Across India, 54% of passengers reported issues with the airline’s timeliness in 2024, up from 33% in the previous year. Concerns over information timeliness and transparency also saw an increase, with 45% of flyers flagging problems this year compared with 27% last year.
This comes at a time when IndiGo is grappling with widespread flight cancellations and delays due to crew constraints following the implementation of revised Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) on November 1. November saw a total of 1,232 cancellations, according to regulatory data. Additional disruptions have been attributed to technical glitches, airspace and ATC restrictions, airport congestion, seasonal schedule changes and occasional weather issues.
In addition, IndiGo’s on-time performance, once its defining strength, has seen a steady decline — from 92.4% in 2021 to 85.4% in 2023, and just 69.69% of flights arriving on time in 2024.
Speaking to The Hindu, chairman and CEO LocalCircles Sachin Taparia, who conducted the survey, said several recent complaints pointing at dark patterns behaviours as well.
“We have several complaints from flyers stating they were denied boarding despite arriving between 45 and 60 minutes before departure, and were then directed to IndiGo’s sales counter to rebook for a later flight by paying the fare difference,” he explained.
“In a significant number of these complaints, passengers claimed they had reached the airport even earlier, about 60 to 80 minutes before departure, but were delayed by long queues. By the time they reached the counter, it was already within the 45–60 minute window that the airline cites,” he added.
Taparia said LocalCircles will be writing formally to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), urging that any passenger who is late for boarding be moved to the next available flight without being charged an additional fare by the airline.
Published – December 04, 2025 08:24 pm IST
