Air India Crash Triggers Crisis Of Confidence In Indian Aviation

Forbes

2 days ago

The tragic crash of Air India's AI171 on June 12, which claimed 270 lives in one of the worst airline disasters in recent years, has triggered a crisis of confidence in Indian aviation.
India is one the world's fastest growing aviation markets with a fleet size of over 800 aircraft and annual traffic of 240 million passengers. This breakneck growth, however, has come with steep costs in terms of weak oversight and the ability of the country's major carriers—privatized Air India, now owned by the storied Tata Group, and Indigo—to contend with soaring passenger demand.
While the official investigation into the crash of Air India's Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner is ongoing, the incident has exposed flaws in regulatory design and the ability of the Tata Group, in particular, to manage, integrate, and transform a hidebound state-owned carrier into a thriving privately owned enterprise.
The Tata Group certainly had the right credentials to takeover Air India from public hands in 2022. In an earlier era, the $165 billion group, one of India's largest, was a pioneer of the country's aviation sector and ran Air India until it was nationalized in 1953. The return of ownership to Bombay House, where the group is headquartered, was a massively emotional moment for the Tata's. Integrating a sleepy and bureaucratic airline was never going to be easy but even the group's supporters have been shocked by the challenges to revive an airline saddled with spiralling debt and toxic culture.
To be sure, there have been positive signs that the revival was working, not least because the Tata's were prepared to deploy serious capital and effort to back its ambitions. The presence of Singapore Airlines as a minority shareholder also bolstered confidence. In February 2023, Air India placed an order for a combination of 570 Boeing and Airbus aircrafts, one of the single largest orders at the time. The airline's liveries and image were spruced up with a slick rebranding campaign, it launched several long-haul routes, and Air India signaled that it was determined to wrest market share away from foreign rivals like Emirates and Qatar.
These positive moves faced turbulence at the last mile—on the ground and inside the actual aircraft which Air India passengers traveled in and social media was soon abuzz with reports of delayed flights, faulty toilets, and indifferent service. To be fair to Air India, it's principal rival in Indian skies, privately-owned Indigo, was ranked lower in the AirHelp Score report last year as one of the world's worst airlines (ranked 103 out of 109, compared with Air India's more favorable 61). While Indigo has contested the ranking, an even bigger issue is weak oversight by India's aviation regulator—the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
In the aftermath of the crash of AI171, Indian media have been replete with reports about DGCA's inadequate oversight and understaffing, including its inability to enforce recent safety audits conducted on Air India. One proposal being out forward by the experts is to transform the DGCA into an independent, oversight body along the lines of U.K.'s Civil Aviation Authority. This is of course a matter for the Indian government to reflect on but a repeated pattern of weaknesses in regulatory oversight will severely impact India's ambitions to become Asia's second largest aviation market after China, which has a fleet size of over 4,000 aircraft and passenger traffic of 730 million.
On its part, the Tata's, which manages some of India's most admired companies, has a special responsibility to get Air India's performance back on track and to deliver on its 2022 'Vihaan.AI' aspiration of building an international carrier with the ethos and pedigree of the group. The clock is ticking.