The routine stress faced by airline passengers—chronic delays, patchy customer service, and the occasional safety scare—is well documented. Consider this: on April 16, a SpiceJet Boeing 737 taxiing at Delhi airport struck a stationary Akasa Air aircraft, damaging its winglet and the horizontal stabiliser of the Akasa plane.
Two months earlier, two planes carrying passengers—an Air India jet and an IndiGo flight—were involved in a minor collision at Mumbai airport when the right wing tips of the two aircraft scraped against each other. India’s aviation sector has been in prolonged turbulence. The Air India crash in June 2025, which killed 260 people, remains a grim reminder of the industry’s vulnerabilities.
It is not as if the government is unaware. A 2026 report by a Parliamentary Standing Committee revealed that 377 of 754 commercial aircraft—nearly half—recorded recurring technical defects between January 2025 and February 2026. IndiGo topped the list: of the 405 aircraft examined, 148 had recurring issues.
Meanwhile, 191 of the 267 aircraft operated by Air India and Air India Express were found to have persistent technical problems. The report also flagged around 100 safety lapses, including seven Level 1 violations requiring immediate corrective action. Yet the crisis runs deeper than faulty aircraft.
Industry grappling with staff shortages
The industry is grappling with staff shortages, violations of flight duty time norms, lapses in quality assurance, unauthorised cockpit access, and even instances of aircraft operating with expired emergency equipment. The chaos at IndiGo counters last December exposed these systemic weaknesses.
If the country’s largest airline—with over 60% domestic market share—struggles to implement Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) even two years after their introduction, it reflects poorly on the entire sector. (FDTL norms were introduced in January 2024 and became fully operational only by November 2025.)
Episodes of accountability
There has been some accountability. Pieter Elbers has stepped down, and co-founder Rahul Bhatia acknowledged that “neither customers nor IndiGo staff deserved it”. The government, too, intervened, mandating a 10% reduction in flights. But the basic question remains: was the board and senior management unaware of such large-scale shortcomings?
At the same time, questions persist over regulatory oversight. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), despite periodic action, is itself understaffed. With a vacancy rate of nearly 50%, doubts remain about its ability to effectively supervise a rapidly expanding aviation sector.
And expanding it certainly is. The government’s ambitious Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik (UDAN) 2.0 scheme, with a budget of `28,840 crore, aims to add 100 new airports and 200 helipads over the next decade.
This push comes even as 15 airports under the original UDAN scheme remain temporarily non-operational due to poor commercial viability, low passenger demand, lack of suitable aircraft, and infrastructure gaps. Yet these facilities continue to be maintained at significant cost to the exchequer, in the hope of eventual revival.
The uncomfortable truth
The uncomfortable truth is that India’s aviation sector is under severe strain. In its pursuit of growth and record-setting expansion, the government risks overburdening an already fragile system. The priority now should not be expansion, but consolidation—strengthening safety, improving regulatory capacity, and enforcing operational discipline. Right now, the industry appears to be flying not on robust systems, but on a wing and a prayer.