Tuesday, March 17th, 2026
Welcome to Quests Daily | Your Compass for the Day in Travel.
The Lead Story:
DGCA Grants Air India Emergency Pilot Duty Waivers
The DGCA has granted Air India temporary relaxations on Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) until April 30, 2026. This allows the airline to extend pilot flight times by 90 minutes (up to 11.5 hours) and total duty periods by 105 minutes for long-haul routes forced into massive detours by the closure of Iranian and Iraqi airspace.
This waiver allows Air India to fly two-pilot crews on routes that would otherwise require three pilots or costly technical stops. While this "relief valve" protects margins and schedule integrity, it creates a massive fatigue risk for Boeing 787 crews. For ops teams, the challenge shifts from fuel management to a complex rostering puzzle, involving mandatory four-hour extended rest periods.
The DGCA’s duty waiver is a temporary survival tool for airline margins, but it shifts the primary risk from 'network disruption' to 'crew fatigue', a dangerous trade-off if the conflict persists beyond April.
The Briefing:
International travel bookings for April have dropped by about 50% as the escalating West Asia conflict and airspace disruptions prompt travellers to postpone overseas trips. Source.
Vietnamese travellers are leading Asia in AI-powered trip planning, with 81% likely to use artificial intelligence for their next journey, well above the regional average of 63%. Source.
The SAF Association has urged the Indian government to promote the use of used cooking oil to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel, aiming to cut aviation emissions and build a circular fuel supply chain. Source.
Term of the Day: Look-to-Book Ratio
The number of people who search for a travel product (the "lookers") compared to the number who actually complete a purchase (the "bookers").
Used when: Measuring the efficiency of your e-commerce platform or evaluating how "high-friction" payment methods (like traditional credit card redirects) are killing your conversion rates.
Travel-focused Credit & Lending in India
Scapia signal: Scapia’s reported $50M–$60M raise suggests investors still see upside in verticalized travel-fintech, particularly cards built around travel rewards and frequency.
Regulatory pressure: RBI has made unsecured credit costlier, so travel cards may get harder to scale and perks may increasingly depend on customer spending.
Data shift: RBI’s digital lending framework favors explicit-consent, audit-friendly data collection over intrusive app permissions, making trust and value exchange more important in customer acquisition.
Operator implication: Hotels and OTAs should explore card-linked rewards partnerships that improve repeat behavior and direct share, but only where the economics outperform existing loyalty or paid acquisition channels.
See you tomorrow with more such insights, if you have been forwarded this email, don’t forget to subscribe to Quests.Travel