India, Dec. 7 -- India's aviation collapse this week did not begin with a software glitch or an unexpected change to crew-rostering norms. It began years earlier, when a market with too few players allowed its largest airline to optimise for cost, market share, and punctuality metrics, while hollowing out the buffers that make a complex network resilient. What is unfolding today is an oligopolistic failure, textbook and predictable.

IndiGo cancelled nearly 600 flights in three days, and over 1,300 across November-December. It is the culmination of a structural equilibrium in which the largest airline behaves as if passengers cannot go anywhere else, competitors cannot catch up, and regulators will always blink. When an airline commands m...