‘Can you hear us?’: IndiGo meltdown turns grand wedding reception into a video call for newlyweds

A newlywed couple in India attended their wedding reception the way most of us spend our mid-morning at the office: sitting in front of a laptop on a Zoom call and asking: “Can you hear us?”

Mr Medha Kshirsagar and Ms Sangama Das, both software engineers, planned to fly from Bhubaneswar to Hubballi via Bengaluru for their grand wedding reception on Dec 2.

The two were married in Bhubaneswar on Nov 23, and the celebration in Hubballi was meant to be a formal post-wedding gathering for their families and friends.

But that plan was waylaid when India’s biggest airline, IndiGo,

began cancelling hundreds of flights

from Dec 2 because of the impact of new scheduling rules and a pilot crunch.

The newlyweds’ flight plan began slipping early on Dec 2 and continued to drift in a slow-motion collapse through the day.

At 4am on Dec 3, the couple learnt their flight had been cancelled outright.

With the reception venue already decorated and paid for, the event, as the bride’s mother put it, “could not be undone”.

So, they improvised.

The bride’s parents stepped in and took the couple’s ceremonial seats, performing the customary rituals, while the actual bride and groom appeared on-screen, waving from several states away.

Guests applauded politely. Some squinted at the feed. If not ideal, the concept was at least contemporary.

Footage of the event spread online, prompting a wave of commentaries.

One viewer imagined the couple’s first words in matrimony were not vows, but the familiar refrain of video calls everywhere: “Can you hear us?”

Another noted that the incident confirmed a longstanding suspicion: Weddings may belong to the couple, but receptions, unequivocally, belong to the parents.

One remarked that the couple’s families deserve full credit, saying: “They are the best and most resourceful people.”

Many said the couple should sue IndiGo and demand that the airline shoulder the cost of the reception.

But others seized the opportunity to critique the couple’s planning, suggesting they should have arrived 24 to 36 hours early, as though all meaningful life events must now include the buffer time of a lunar mission.

The tumult at IndiGo originated largely from new rules increasing weekly rest periods for pilots by 12 hours to 48 hours, while reducing night landings.

IndiGo, which operates a domestic near-duopoly with Tata Group-owned Air India, said the cancellations arose primarily from “misjudgment and planning gaps”.

The cancellations come during the peak wedding season – a US$130 billion (S$168 billion) sector in India in which families spend a large chunk of their wealth on extensive, days-long celebrations with a high dose of music, dance and gifts.