When airlines treat the skies as monopoly, passengers pay in blood

Hans India

21-06-2025

It's been a week since Air India Flight AI 171, a Dreamliner enroute to London Gatwick, crash-landed within seconds of take-off in Ahmedabad—killing nearly 270 people in what is now the deadliest disaster in Indian civil aviation history. And yet, the cause of the crash remains cloaked in bureaucratic silence and corporate deflection.
Officials familiar with the investigation into the crash suspect that a sudden power failure shortly after take-off may have brought down the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which crashed into a medical hostel building after gaining an altitude of only 625 feet.
According to an aviation expert and YouTuber, Captain Steve, in such an eventuality, the plane would fall pretty quickly and nothing would be working for the pilots to guide the plane back to the ground. When nothing else works, the ram air turbine drops out automatically at the back of the airplane' which is like a standard small boat engine that sits in the water. 'It's got a little propeller on the front of it, and it starts spinning like crazy. It works and gives me hydraulics and electric so that I can run the radios, I can lower the landing gear, and I can manoeuvre the airplane safely to a landing.'
We will have to wait for the final report to know if the flight had the RAT system or not and was power failure the real reason for the crash.
For now, all we know are heart-wrenching fragments. Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and co-pilot Clive Kundar perished with their passengers. Vishwakumar Ramesh, seated in 11A, survived by a twist of fate, though his younger brother in 11J did not. In another tragic corner, a doctor's infant son clings to life in an ICU after the fireball consumed their residential block.
DNA identification is underway, bodies are being handed over, and prayers offered. But the larger and grimmer question looms: Who will take responsibility for this catastrophe?
A culture of silence,
not safety:
Air India continues to report an alarming number of technical snags. On June 19, AI 388 made an emergency return to Delhi after take-off, due to expired emergency slides and gas canisters. How was such an aircraft cleared for flight?
We are told a 'blind check' was done—a cockpit drill where a pilot, eyes closed, locates controls under guidance. But that doesn't explain how expired safety equipment made it onto a passenger aircraft. This is not a pilot memory that is being tested—this is ignoring basic maintenance.
Worse still is the information vacuum. There are unconfirmed reports of 29 technical snags in 35 days, yet there is no official statement or denial from either Air India or the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Just silence.
Aviation experts appear every night on TV, advising patience and reiterating that airplanes are 'systems of systems'—digital engines, hydraulics, computers. They urge us to await the investigation. But why should public trust hinge on the black box, when the entire system has gone dark?
The DGCA—the very body mandated to enforce aviation safety—is conveniently hiding behind the pretext of an 'ongoing investigation.' But why isn't it answering the real question even in the aftermath of such a colossal failure: if red flags were raised about Air India's deteriorating safety standards since the Tata takeover, why was the airline allowed to operate unchecked until it cost 270 lives?' Even a semblance of transparency would have helped rebuild public trust.
Instead, all we get is cold corporate condolence. A vague assurance that a '360-degree investigation' will cover human error, technical failure, even sabotage. But no one—neither the Union Civil Aviation Minister, nor the DGCA, nor Air India, and neither the owners at the Tata Group—is willing to publicly own up the failure.
Crisis management or
image management?
As usual, PR was quicker to act than protocol. Tata Group Chairman N Chandrasekaran gave ana exclusive, soft-focus interview to a national TV channel, circulated promptly by a PR agency. Every line sounded rehearsed.
He was asked where he was when he heard the news. 'I was in my office in Bombay… I rushed to Ahmedabad,' he said, emotionally. He grieved with the victims. He promised a trust fund. He ruled out engine failure, hinted that maintenance schedules were in place. But he wasn't asked the real questions: Why were no aircraft grounded after the crash? Has a complete audit of all Dreamliners been ordered? Why not pause operations, inspect every aircraft, and restore public confidence before another tragedy unfolds? What could have been a moment for transformational leadership appeared to have become a scripted corporate monologue.
The opposition: Rhetoric without responsibility:
Shockingly, even the opposition has missed the mark. Instead of demanding tough questions from regulators, they're busy seeking a special Parliament session to indulge in hollow sloganeering—yet another performance of fakery and optics, perhaps timed for Bihar's upcoming elections. Where is the concern for aviation safety? Where is the pressure on the Civil Aviation Ministry?
When disasters happen, only families grieve. The rest— politicians, bureaucrats, corporate houses—hide behind press releases, compensation packages and vague promises of 'processes being followed.' What they fail to grasp is this: Accountability is not an inconvenience; it is the cornerstone of public safety.
Crisis misused is
crisis wasted:
Air India, under the Tata Group, inherited a mess. It lost over ₹70,000 crore by 2021 and was sold for ₹18,000 crore—₹2,700 crore in cash, the rest in assumed debt. But buying an airline doesn't mean buying immunity.
Despite injecting new aircraft and claiming adherence to protocols, the ecosystem remains crippled. Maintenance gaps, skilled manpower shortages, outdated safety audits, and an inert regulator define India's aviation sector today.
Air India needed not just a financial reboot—it required a culture overhaul, a safety renaissance, and ethical transparency. Are they moving in that direction remains the big question.
Even now, there is no confirmation that all AI aircraft are being thoroughly re-checked. Chandrasekaran ruled out any independent probe, content to let the DGCA. He even claimed, 'I didn't see any red flags.'
The biggest red flag, sir, remains the charred remains of AI 171.
The larger truth is that Air India is being strangled by operational laxity, financial burden, regulatory lethargy, and public distrust. Without systemic overhaul—real, not cosmetic— we are sleepwalking into more disasters.
The death toll of AI 171 is not just a statistic—it is a mirror held up to a country that fails its own people. Where profit outweighs procedure, where regulators hide behind forms, and where tragedies are converted into talking points before disappearing from memory.
Airlines must stop treating the skies as their monopoly and passengers as collateral. The government must treat civil aviation safety not as a footnote in a budget document but as a matter of national security. The DGCA must be made autonomous, answerable to a parliamentary body—not to the political bosses or airline owners.
After all, transparency is not a courtesy. It is a duty.
Until we stop flying blind—in aircraft, in governance, and in ethics—we will remain a country that mourns its citizens in silence but never learns why they died.
(The author is former Chief Editor of The Hans India)