It’s not unusual to see people miss flights, and/or to see them lose their patience with frontline airline employees. Here’s a unique twist on that, as a former senior airline executive has gone on a bit of a rant, after IndiGo left him behind during a rolling delay. Are his complaints warranted, or should he just have been at the gate earlier?
Ex-AirAsia India CFO furious after missing IndiGo flight
Vijay Gopalan is the former CFO of AirAsia India, and on February 5, 2026, he was scheduled to fly on IndiGo flight 6E7268, from Tiruchirappalli (TRZ) to Chennai (MAA).
He checked in online for the short 183-mile flight, and arrived at the airport at around 1PM, for a scheduled 2:55PM departure. He went straight to the airport lounge (which he presumably had access to through Priority Pass or some other program), and spent time there getting caught up on work.
On the monitor in the lounge, he noticed that the flight was delayed until 3:10PM, then until 3:15PM, and then until 3:25PM, so obviously there was a bit of a rolling delay.
The monitor in the lounge was constantly being updated, and it showed “security” as the status for the flight, as opposed to “check-in,” “departing,” or “boarding.” So he reasonably inferred that the flight wasn’t yet boarding, and stayed in the lounge working, especially since the gate was just a very short distance away.
At 3:05PM, he received a phone call from an IndiGo staff member, informing him that the flight had left, and asking where he was. To be clear, they weren’t telling him they were about to close the door and that he should hurry, but instead, that the flight already left.
He explained his situation, and she said that they had announced boarding multiple times, and even paged him. But of course since he was in the lounge, he couldn’t hear it. When he arrived at the gate, one of the gate agents accused him of wanting to “eat good food” in the lounge, and that doesn’t justify delaying a flight for everyone else.
He stated that the ground staff were super rude and wouldn’t take any accountability for the flight status issues, instead explaining he should’ve been at the gate 40 minutes before departure, and that gates close 20 minutes before departure.
You can find the gate confrontation below.
Then you can find his detailed explanation of what happened below.
My take on this IndiGo missed flight confrontation
This is a tricky situation on several levels. Technically speaking, IndiGo’s website states the following regarding when passengers have to be at the gate:
Boarding gates close 25 minutes to departure at all airports. Passengers must be present at the boarding gate no later than the time specified by IndiGo when they check in or any subsequent announcements made at the airport.
If this flight had been on-time, then I’d largely side with the airline. The issue here is that this was obviously a rolling delay, and this passenger was actually applying logic to the situation. If you have a rolling delay, if it’s 20 minutes before the posted departure time, and if the departure monitor doesn’t show a flight as boarding, it’s not unreasonable to assume that you might still have some time.
I do find it strange how the ground staff call him after the flight has left, to inform him that it has departed without him. You’d think that if you’re going to make a courtesy call, you’d do so before the door closes, when there’s actually a benefit to it, rather than after.
The ground staff definitely showed at an attitude, like suggesting he wanted to “eat good food” rather than be at the gate. At the same time, frontline staff are hardly empowered with most operational decisions, especially at an airline the scale of IndiGo which doesn’t exactly run a high-touch operation. I also imagine that a lot of frontline IndiGo staff are a bit scarred after the massive meltdown weeks ago, where passengers misdirected their frustration at them.
I’d say that the former AirAsia CFO was actually pretty measured in how he interacted with he employees, and if you’re applying logic to the situation, I’d say he’s correct, even if the airline technically wasn’t violating any of its own policies by closing the door 20+ minutes ahead of the scheduled departure time. This just seems like a really poorly managed rolling delay.
Bottom line
AirAsia India’s former CFO was booked on an IndiGo flight with a rolling delay. He stayed in the lounge, given that the departure time kept getting pushed back, and the monitor didn’t show the flight as boarding. However, he received a phone call 20 minutes before departure, informing him that he had missed the flight, and scolding him for being in the lounge.
This is a situation where the staff may have technically been following the carrier’s published policies, but the customer service and delay notifications definitely left a lot to be desired.
What do you make of this IndiGo missed flight fiasco?
