Abhijit Bhattacharyya l India Aviation Reform Vital Before Reckless Expansion

The prospect of civil aviation spreading to every nook and corner of this country is a welcome development. This was evident at the just-concluded “Wings India” in Hyderabad, and acknowledged by both Airbus and Boeing, the two biggest players in the world passenger aircraft market. While Airbus predicted India’s commercial aircraft fleet would triple to 2,250 by the next decade, Boeing claimed “India and South Asia will need 3,300 new aircraft by 2044”.

Nevertheless, the reality of Indian aviation must be closely examined. Let’s start with the State’s foundational document, the Constitution of India, which prescribes the role and responsibility of various wings of the State: Parliament and state legislatures, the executive, judiciary and the overlapping Centre-state concurrent responsibilities. Under the Seventh Schedule, the “Union List” (Item 29) includes “airways, aircraft and air navigation of aerodromes, regulation and organisation of air traffic and of aerodromes; provision for aeronautical education and training and regulation of such education and provided by states and other agencies”. There is no mention of aviation in either the “State List” (containing 66 items) or the “Concurrent List” (of 47 items). Therefore, like control over the Railways, aviation is the sole prerogative of the Central government and its duties and responsibilities are clear and unambiguous. Aviation is a Central subject and not that of the states as it’s a strategic asset of a continent-like-country of 1.42 billion people.

This issue has gained critical importance due to two recent accidents -- the first on June 12, 2025 at Ahmedabad airport after an Air India Boeing-787 “Dreamliner” crashed immediately after take-off, killing 260 people in air and on the ground; and the second on January 28, 2026, near Baramati airfield in Maharashtra, where a chartered Learjet-45 of a private non-scheduled operator crashed, killing the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra and his staff on board. In Ahmedabad, a big plane crashed within seconds of take-off. At Baramati, a small aircraft crashed seconds before landing. That means both take-off and landing in Indian aviation, along with the man-machine interface and overall airport infrastructure and management, deserve an in-depth re-look, and long-term reforms need to be initiated.

The expansion of aviation at breakneck speed does not always work, mainly due to sheer complexities and sophistication of technology and the possible absence of adequate numbers of trained personnel in the apron, hangar, control tower and cockpit.

Aviation is essentially a capital, fuel, labour and tech-intensive industry, and the gestation period of each requires long-term expertise and impeccable professionalism. Hence, anyone with the sole motive of profit and cutting corners to fly high should never be allowed to operate. The State has to come down hard and take control to ensure that flight safety gets top priority at all times.

Aviation is the most unforgiving among all modern industries, and the way things have been run in India ever since the 1991-1992 liberalisation and privatisation means there is a vital need for course-correction by the Indian State. The skies can’t be left solely in the hands of private players any longer. As is well known, over 34 non-scheduled private carriers have closed shop in last 34 years. On top of that, the Government of India was forced to privatise Air India owing to the recurring losses it was incurring.

Since the vast majority of private airlines have clearly proved themselves to be less than competent, it is time for the Centre to get back into the aviation sector because a continent-like-country India should never be left without a strategic industrial asset like aerial route. Let the private firms continue to operate, but the field today needs sound operators with financial heft. The private operators, regrettably, have showed their ambition but not their ability. Without sound economics and deep pockets, operating in the aviation sector is hard to sustain. Quality control and flight safety being the top priority, financial shortcuts are bound to lead to avoidable disasters.

Let’s peruse an open-source Internet document. A letter dated March 5, 2019 by the chief electoral officer of Telangana, addressed to all state officials, forwarded information received from the Election Commission on the “list of non-scheduled operators’ permit-holders, as updated by the DGCA, New Delhi, up to 20.2.2019”. There were 99 (NSOP) private carriers on the eve of India’s 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Today, the same “List of NSOP”, as updated till 30.9.2025 and uploaded in its website, contains 133 carriers (all private, except Pawan Hans, which is the only government-owned helicopter service provider). The list contains a bewildering variety of aircraft and helicopters, virtually all of which are foreign-made, and thus imported at a huge cost. Cessna, Bell, Falcon, King-Air, Euro-copter, Beechcraft, Embraer, Challenger, Airbus, Ecureuil, Hawker, PC-12, AW (Augusta-Westland), Gulfstream, Robinson, Pilatus, Sikorsky, Bombardier, Dauphin, Leonardo, Mi-172 and Learjet-45 fill the inventory which criss-cross the Indian skies.

This mushrooming growth of NSOPs requires pilots, engineers, maintenance staff, mandatory check of flying machines, repair, overhaul, spare parts, flight testing, landing charges, parking charges and various other paraphernalia which require huge investment and an endless flow of cash because of the flight safety factor.

The off-line airfield at Baramati, where the January crash took place, is now in focus. Any serious person in the aviation world will always prefer to operate in a proper take-off/landing environment, with all equipment on the ground in order. Helicopters can of course be deployed from helipads; but if a fast-moving 15-year-old Learjet-45 with a VIP on board takes to negotiating an inherently challenging scenario, with manual helping hands on the ground or a rudimentary control tower, it may be time to first concentrate on arrival and departure facilities on the ground before going in for a reckless expansion of air assets.

Aircraft do not fly 24 hours a day. If it flies for 10 hours, it has to be on the ground 14 hours for maintenance and logistics, engineering needs, before it can be in the air again.

Post-script: An Air India Boeing 787 London-Bengaluru flight faced a “fuel control switch” glitch before taking off on February 1. While the plane landed safely and the crew filed a report with the DGCA, the UK Civil Aviation Authority rightly questioned the airline’s action. “How AI 787 craft with full passenger load, grounded on arrival in India for safety checks, took off from London?” The very next day, the government told Parliament that “over two-thirds of AI planes were identified with recurring defects”. Clearly Indian aviation needs major reforms: we have had enough of fortune-seeking private players. Are we missing out on flight safety?

The writer is a life member of the Aeronautical Society of India and an alumnus of the National Defence College, New Delhi. The views expressed here are personal.