New Delhi: What happened inside India’s busiest airline over the first week of December did not look like a routine operational lapse. People inside the system described it as a breakdown that had been building for months, waiting for one spark to turn it into a full-blown emergency.

Several pilots, aviation staffers and industry watchers said privately that what unfolded was not simply a scheduling issue. They believed the airline had walked straight into a storm it had created for itself.

One pilot, who has worked in the industry for nearly a decade, explained that he had never seen such a collapse. He said that the airline was now suffering because of choices it had made, not because of any external shock.

Another pilot with around five thousand hours of flying experience, who has b

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