Bharat's Aerial Dearms - Jyoti Ghanshyam

Bharat’s Turbulent Skies: A Collision of Grand Ambitions and Grounded Realities

On June 12, 2025, the skies over Ahmedabad witnessed a horrific tragedy. Flight AK-171 of Air India, a symbol of national pride, became a fireball, its smoldering wreckage scattering across the ground and extinguishing 274 lives in an instant. The disaster is a chilling echo of the 2010 Air India Express crash in Mangalore that killed 158 people. Such incidents force us to confront the complex and deeply troubling questions haunting Bharat's aviation sector. Bharat’s relationship with flight is as old as its myths. Our epics imagined flying chariots (the Pushpak Viman), and centuries ago, treatises on aeronautics were penned on this land. Pioneers like Shivkar Bāpuji Talpade experimented with unmanned aircraft long before the Wright Brothers, and in 1932, while Bharat was still under colonial rule, J.R.D. Tata laid the foundation for commercial aviation. He didn't just start an airline; he built Air India into a "celestial palace," a global benchmark for excellence. How did we get from there to here? How has a nation with such a rich heritage, now the world's third-largest aviation market, become ensnared in a web of dependency, financial instability, and persistent safety concerns? While Bharat makes headlines with record-breaking aircraft orders, this report unravels the intricate conflict between our grand ambitions and the harsh realities that keep them grounded.

The Elusive ‘Made in Bharat’ Aircraft

A question that troubles the common citizen is why a nation that successfully sends missions to the Moon and Mars cannot build a commercial aircraft that carries its own people. Today, not just our skies but the entire global aircraft manufacturing industry is dominated by a powerful duopoly: America’s Boeing and Europe’s Airbus. Bharat is a colossal customer, not a creator. This dependency was starkly highlighted in 2023, when Air India placed a historic order for 470 aircraft from these two giants—a deal valued at an estimated $70 billion, cementing our role as a buyer, not a builder.

The Two Giants and Their Impenetrable Fortress

Boeing and Airbus established their dominance not by chance, but by design. Their empires are built on the foundations of massive government support, decades of experience, and ruthless competitive strategy. Boeing was forged in the crucible of World War II, becoming an aerial arsenal for the United States. Airbus was born from a pan-European political dream to challenge the American monopoly. These companies are emblems of national will. Their influence matches their global ambition. They wield significant power over regulatory bodies like the FAA and EASA, making it easier for them to gain technical approvals than for any competitor. Boeing notoriously rushed the approval of its MCAS system, a decision that led to the catastrophic crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 in 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in 2019. Shockingly, these aircraft remained in service for days after the disasters, a testament to the immense difficulty in taking swift action against these titans. The duopoly has built an impenetrable fortress around its market share. When Canada’s Bombardier designed an innovative, fuel-efficient jet and began capturing the market for smaller aircraft, the giants retaliated. Leveraging its status as a massive lobbying force, Boeing accused Bombardier of predatory pricing. The U.S. government responded by imposing a staggering 300% tariff on Bombardier's jets, crippling the company. Soon after, Airbus acquired a majority stake in the program. The message was chillingly clear: this sky is not big enough for a third player.  

Bharat’s Formidable Climb

For Bharat, the dream of building an indigenous passenger jet is fraught with immense obstacles.

• Prohibitive Costs: Developing a new aircraft from scratch is a high-stakes gamble, potentially costing over $30 billion for a single program. The struggles of the NAL Saras, a small civil aircraft project plagued by delays, cost overruns, and a fatal crash in 2009, underscore these challenges.

• The Engine Dependency: The heart of an aircraft is its engine, and the core technology remains under the tight control of a few Western firms. Relying on others for this critical technology is like building a house on someone else’s land. China learned this the hard way when the U.S. threatened to block engine supplies for its indigenous Comac jet.

• Assembly vs. Creation: While the Tata-Airbus partnership to assemble C295 military transport aircraft in Gujarat is a promising step, it is assembly—not end-to-end indigenous design and manufacturing.

The Bleeding Wings: Bharat's Ailing Airlines

Though more Bharatiyas are flying than ever before, the airlines themselves are navigating perpetual financial turbulence, with projected collective losses of $400-600 million for 2025-26. The collapse of Jet Airways in 2019 and the bankruptcy of Go First in 2023 are stark reminders of the industry's fragility.

Why Are They Losing Altitude?

• The Crippling Crisis of Grounded Aircraft: Go First’s insolvency was a direct result of this crisis. The airline claimed that faulty Pratt & Whitney engines forced it to ground over half of its fleet, decimating its revenue. This is a nationwide problem. An estimated 15-17% of Bharat's entire commercial fleet is grounded due to global supply chain disruptions for engines and spare parts. These expensive assets sit idle, haemorrhaging money daily.

• The Burden of Taxes: Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) is an airline's lifeblood, but high central and state taxes in Bharat make it one of the most expensive in the world. This relentless financial pressure forces airlines into a constant battle for survival.

• The Human Cost of Cost-Cutting: Overworked Pilots and Ground Staff: The relentless drive to cut costs has created a pressure-cooker environment for pilots and ground staff. Pilots face erratic schedules, back-to-back night duties, and minimal rest, leading to fatigue and stress. Their pay is often calculated only for flight hours, while their total duty hours can be two to three times longer. The immense cost of training traps many in debt, creating a state of financial servitude. This chronic overwork is a direct compromise on safety, as fatigued pilots are far more prone to error. Equally affected are the ground staff, including maintenance engineers. A dangerous culture is emerging where staff are discouraged from officially reporting every technical snag. As one pilot revealed, minor issues are often overlooked, with ground engineers issuing temporary permissions knowing the problem will recur. Airlines are aware of these live snag reports but often clear the aircraft for takeoff, leaving pilots to manage the issues mid-flight. This practice ensures that safety problems are systematically under-reported, creating the conditions for a future disaster.

The Dangerous Consequences

A financially sick airline is a dangerous airline. In 2022, the DGCA placed SpiceJet under enhanced surveillance due to multiple technical malfunctions and its precarious financial health.

• A Gamble on Maintenance: When cash is tight, scheduled maintenance may be deferred. Airlines may gamble that a part will last a little longer, pushing safety protocols to the brink.

• A Vicious Cycle of Aging Fleets: Airlines are forced to operate older aircraft for longer and cannot afford to maintain an adequate inventory of spare parts. This creates a vicious cycle: older planes need more repairs, but the lack of parts leads to cancellations and more grounded aircraft.

Accountability in the Aftermath: A System of Penalties Without Teeth

A critical flaw in Bharat's aviation safety framework is the ease with which airlines evade serious accountability for accidents or repeated safety violations. While the DGCA imposes fines, they are often seen as insufficient to drive systemic change. In its analysis of the AI-171 crash, the Deccan Herald noted that Air India had been repeatedly criticised for safety lapses. The DGCA had warned the airline for operating aircraft without inspecting emergency slides and, in February 2025, imposed a negligible fine of ₹30 lakh for violating flight duty and rest regulations. The core issue is that if penalties are simply absorbed as a ‘cost of doing business,’ they fail to address the root problems. Furthermore, there are allegations that many past incidents have been suppressed, with formal inquiry reports never being made public. This lack of transparency allows airlines to bury their mistakes and evade future preventive measures. This is not just a balance sheet problem; it is a systemic vulnerability that directly impacts the safety and reliability of every flight.  

The Human Factor: A Widening Skills Gap

An aircraft is only as reliable as the hands that build, maintain, and fly it. Bharat's aviation sector is plagued by a critical skills gap.

• Knowledge Without Skill: We are producing engineers who are brilliant on paper but have never touched a real aircraft. This chasm between theory and practice is a persistent concern for Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) facilities.

• The Prohibitive Cost of Aspiration: Becoming a pilot is incredibly expensive, with training costs ranging from ₹40 lakh to over ₹1 crore. This financial barrier led to the 2011 fake pilot scam, where individuals were arrested for obtaining licenses using fraudulent documents, exposing grave flaws in the training and licensing system.

• Preparing for Today with Yesterday’s Curriculum: While the aviation industry is advancing with AI-powered diagnostics and drone technology, our training curricula are often stuck in the past, creating a workforce ill-equipped for modern complexities.

Unarmed Guardians: The Crisis in Regulatory Oversight

The DGCA (the regulator) and the AAIB (the accident investigation body) are meant to be the guardians of Bharat’s skies. However, these vital institutions are chronically under-resourced, and their independence is compromised. In 2014, the U.S. FAA downgraded Bharat’s air safety rating precisely because the DGCA lacked sufficient qualified personnel.

• Chronic Staff Shortages: While the rating was later restored, the underlying problem persists. As of March 2024, more than half of the DGCA's sanctioned posts were vacant. This means there are not enough qualified inspectors to properly oversee a rapidly growing fleet.

• A Chain of Command: Both institutions operate under a government ministry. This structure inherently compromises their independence, creating the dangerous possibility of political pressure influencing investigations. Following the 2010 Mangalore crash, while pilot error was cited as the primary cause, the final report also pointed to systemic issues like airport infrastructure and regulatory oversight, which are often overlooked.

• A Veil of Secrecy: Defying global best practices, the DGCA has reportedly stopped making detailed safety audit reports of airlines public. This lack of transparency leaves passengers with no way to assess the safety record of the airline they are flying with.

• Unqualified Decision-Makers and Political Apathy: A major concern is that many high-level decision-makers within the DGCA often lack direct aviation expertise. Furthermore, critical safety and operational challenges facing the world's third-largest aviation market are rarely discussed with the necessary depth or frequency in the Lok Sabha. A parliamentary report months before the hypothetical AK-171 crash had already flagged a clear imbalance in fund allocation to these key aviation bodies, indicating a lack of sustained and informed political will to fix fundamental problems.

Conclusion

The crash of Air India Flight 171 must be seen not as an isolated tragedy, but as a critical symptom of a system under immense strain. The failure to build our own aircraft, the financial collapse of airlines like Jet Airways and Go First, the pilot training scandals, and the FAA downgrade are not separate issues. They are dangerously interconnected. To make our skies truly safe, Bharat must embark on a mission more complex than sending a probe to the moon. It requires a national strategy that will:

1. Liberate the Airlines: Unburden airlines from crippling fuel taxes, allowing them to invest in safety and fleet modernisation. Crucially, this means prioritising human resources by ensuring fair duty hours, adequate rest, and a non-punitive system for reporting safety concerns for pilots and ground staff.

2. Forge a Skilled Workforce: Overhaul aviation education to make it practical, affordable, and aligned with future technologies, producing professionals who are skilled in both theory and practice.

3. Empower the Regulators: Grant the DGCA and AAIB true legal and financial autonomy, insulating them from political pressure. Leadership positions must be filled by experts with deep domain experience, and parliamentary oversight must prioritise aviation safety with sustained, detailed engagement.

Only by confronting these foundational flaws can Bharat hope to transform its grand aviation dreams into a safe and sustainable reality. Jyoti Ghanshyam 9901164468 (Aeronautical Engineer) (This article is the translated version of the original article भारताची हवाई स्वप्ने written by Jyoti Ghanshyam published in the Sahitya Chaprak Diwali Ank 2025 )