Between January 2024 and December 2025, India’s aviation safety regulator issued 352 show-cause notices to domestic airlines. The figure, shared in Parliament by Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol in response to Trinamool Congress MP Saket Gokhale, spans violations across safety, maintenance, operations, training and passenger rights.

On paper, this is enforcement at work. But what does the number really signal – a vigilant regulator, or a system under strain?

India today has five major scheduled carriers – IndiGo, Air India, Air India Express, Akasa Air and SpiceJet – alongside smaller regional players.

InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, which operates IndiGo, accounted for 98 notices – nearly 28 percent of the total. Air India received 84 notices, Air India Express 65, SpiceJet 45 and Alliance Air 23. Akasa Air and FlyBig were issued 17 and 12 notices respectively.

Of the 352 cases, penalties were imposed in 139 instances and warnings issued in 113. Thirty-three matters led to suspension of personnel or operations, while 15 resulted in withdrawal of approvals. Only seven cases were closed without action after the regulator found the airline’s reply satisfactory. Eleven replies were still awaited and 29 cases remained under process at the time of the reply.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) says monitoring has been digitised through the eGCA portal, with real-time surveillance through its Management Information System.

The statistics show activity. The larger question is whether they show deterrence.

What the Fleet Data Reveals

Beyond notices, data on repetitive defects offers deeper insight into fleet health.

IndiGo had 405 aircraft undergo analysis for repetitive defects. Of these, 148 aircraft were identified as having recurring issues as of early February – more than one-third of the analysed fleet.

Air India’s proportion was significantly higher. Out of 166 aircraft examined, 137 were identified with repetitive defects – more than 80 percent of the analysed fleet.

Air India Express had 54 aircraft flagged out of 101 analysed. SpiceJet recorded 16 out of 43, while Akasa Air – despite operating a younger fleet – had 14 aircraft identified out of 32 examined.

Repetitive defects do not automatically mean unsafe aircraft; aviation systems are designed with redundancies, and defects are logged and rectified. But recurring technical flags do point to operational pressures — whether linked to fleet age, maintenance capacity, spare parts logistics or scheduling intensity.

In a sector expanding at breakneck speed, such patterns merit scrutiny rather than dismissal.

Oversight on Paper vs. Oversight in Practice

The DGCA conducted 3,890 surveillance inspections and 56 regulatory audits last year. It carried out 84 surveillance operations on foreign aircraft, 492 ramp checks, 874 spot checks and 550 night surveillance operations.

The regulator has also expanded its sanctioned technical posts from 637 in 2022 to 1,063 after restructuring – a 67 percent increase intended to strengthen oversight.

Yet questions persist about regulatory capacity and consistency. India currently operates over 110 functional airports, handling rapidly growing passenger volumes. While many licences have been renewed after meeting regulatory requirements, exemptions at legacy airfields continue to exist.

Former DGCA officials have defended such exemptions as practical necessities. “If there are to be absolutely no exemptions, then I will have to basically shut down all airports,” one former Director General said in an earlier interview, arguing that risk must be managed rather than absolutist.

Aviation cannot be paralysed by rigidity, but neither can safety be diluted by accommodation. So, is the balance calibrated correctly?

Market Concentration and Systemic Risk

Over the past decade, airlines such as Jet Airways and Kingfisher shut down, while IndiGo expanded aggressively to over 140 destinations. Market consolidation is not inherently negative; it can deliver efficiency and scale. But concentration also introduces systemic vulnerability.

If one airline controls a substantial share of capacity, operational miscalculations are no longer isolated corporate issues; they become public disruptions just like Indigo’s recent case.

The IndiGo Disruption – A Stress Test for the System

If the numbers illustrate systemic strain, the December cancellations illustrated how quickly strain can become disruption.

IndiGo, which controls roughly 65 percent of India’s domestic aviation market, cancelled over 1,500 flights between December 3 and 5, with around 1,000 cancellations on December 5 alone. The fallout was immediate – stranded passengers, overcrowded terminals, fare spikes and cascading delays across routes.

The trigger was not weather or technical failure, but the implementation of revised Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) norms mandated by the DGCA. The new rules increased mandatory weekly rest for pilots from 36 to 48 hours and restricted night landings. Although notified in January 2024, the norms were required to be strictly implemented following a High Court order in April 2025.

For airlines that had not adjusted pilot rosters and recruitment accordingly, compliance proved difficult.

IndiGo’s leadership apologised publicly and issued refunds. The regulator temporarily put in abeyance aspects of its directive regarding crew-duty orders until February 2026 to stabilise operations, a move strongly opposed by pilot associations, who argued that any dilution undermines safety.

The episode revealed how tightly stretched airline staffing models can be, and how deeply dependent the system has become on one dominant carrier. When a market leader falters, the entire aviation network feels the shock.

The December crisis also triggered a sharp rise in ticket prices on certain routes. Political leaders criticised what they described as monopolistic tendencies. The Civil Aviation Minister summoned airline executives and announced that portions of winter schedules would be reallocated to smaller carriers.

The immediate crisis subsided. The structural question remains.

Is the DGCA Comparatively Lax? A Look at Global Regulators

Aviation safety is not judged merely by the number of notices issued. It is measured by the clarity of enforcement, the severity of penalties, the transparency of disclosure and the independence of the regulator from the industry it oversees.

When the Directorate General of Civil Aviation’s 352 show-cause notices are placed alongside enforcement patterns in other major aviation jurisdictions, important contrasts begin to emerge.

Transparency: Who Sees What?

In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) routinely publishes detailed civil penalty actions. These disclosures typically identify the airline involved, describe the nature of the violation, cite the statutory breach and specify the monetary penalty imposed. Enforcement orders and certificate suspensions are publicly accessible and searchable through official databases.

The United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) similarly discloses enforcement undertakings, licence restrictions and prosecution outcomes. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) publishes structured annual safety reviews outlining systemic findings, corrective measures and emerging risk categories across member states.

In India, enforcement disclosures remain largely aggregate. Parliamentary replies provide total counts of notices, penalties and suspensions, but there is no regularly updated, publicly searchable database detailing airline-specific violations, penalty amounts, repeat patterns or compliance timelines. While enforcement activity exists, its granular visibility remains limited.

This distinction is not cosmetic. Transparency itself functions as a regulatory instrument. When enforcement outcomes are publicly visible, airlines face not only regulatory consequences but reputational exposure. Without that layer of scrutiny, the deterrent effect is inevitably softer.

Penalty Severity, Cost of Non-Compliance

Enforcement in the United States and Europe frequently carries substantial financial consequences. The FAA has imposed multi-million-dollar civil penalties for maintenance lapses, training deficiencies and documentation failures. European regulators have, at various times, restricted aircraft types, grounded fleets or capped operations pending compliance.

In India’s case, while 352 notices were issued over two years, 139 resulted in penalties and 33 in suspensions. High-value monetary sanctions are not commonly publicised, particularly relative to airline balance sheets and operational scale.

The issue is not whether penalties are imposed. It is whether they are economically consequential.

If the cost of non-compliance remains modest compared to the financial benefits of aggressive scheduling, tighter crew utilisation or deferred corrective adjustments, penalties risk becoming an operational expense rather than a behavioural corrective. Effective deterrence depends not on frequency alone, but on impact.

Speed and Consistency of Action

Global regulators have demonstrated willingness to act decisively when systemic safety thresholds are crossed. Temporary groundings, fleet-wide inspections and operational restrictions are established tools within the U.S. and European regulatory arsenal.

In India, enforcement commonly follows a structured progression: show-cause notice, response, warning or penalty. The process is procedural and deliberate, but can extend over time. The temporary holding in abeyance of certain crew-duty enforcement measures following widespread flight disruptions further intensified debate about regulatory firmness under pressure.

Was the pause a pragmatic stabilisation measure in the face of disruption? Or did it reflect a degree of elasticity when operational fallout became widespread?

Consistency under stress is central to safety culture. If enforcement actions appear negotiable during periods of strain, long-term compliance incentives may subtly shift.

Institutional Structure and Independence

Structural design also shapes regulatory posture. The FAA operates as an independent federal agency. The UK CAA functions as a public corporation with statutory autonomy. While accountable within governmental frameworks, both maintain operational distance from ministries directly responsible for sector expansion.

India’s DGCA functions under the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

Administrative alignment does not inherently imply compromise. However, when a regulator tasked with enforcing safety norms is embedded within the same ecosystem that sets expansion targets and promotes sectoral growth, tensions can arise. In a high-growth environment, strict regulation may be perceived as friction rather than function.

The question is not one of intent, but of structural resilience: does the DGCA possess sufficient autonomy and institutional backing to enforce safety measures even when doing so inconveniences dominant carriers or slows expansion momentum?

Enforcement and Behavioural Incentives

The IndiGo flight disruption offers a revealing illustration. Revised Flight Duty Time Limitation norms were notified well in advance, increasing mandatory weekly rest for pilots and restricting night landings. Yet when full implementation strained operations, aspects of enforcement were temporarily eased to stabilise the system.

From one perspective, this was pragmatic governance designed to prevent cascading disruption. From another, it signalled that large-scale operational stress can influence regulatory posture.

If airlines conclude that significant capacity disruption may prompt regulatory accommodation, incentives shift subtly. Cost-optimisation strategies may move closer to compliance boundaries, particularly in a competitive and rapidly expanding market. Even absent deliberate wrongdoing, softer enforcement climates can gradually encourage operational models that test limits.

Regulatory credibility is measured most rigorously not in routine oversight, but during moments of systemic strain.

Where the DGCA Appears to Lag

Compared to leading global regulators, India’s aviation oversight appears less forceful in certain enforcement dimensions – particularly in the public disclosure of airline-specific violations, the visible scale of monetary penalties, the speed of escalation mechanisms and structural distance from policy-making authorities driving expansion.

None of these elements, in isolation, establish systemic failure. India retains international recognition under global aviation safety frameworks, and commercial aviation in the country remains statistically safe. However, regulatory strength is not defined solely by the absence of accidents. It is defined by the firmness of oversight before vulnerabilities compound.

As passenger volumes rise and market concentration deepens, the margin for regulatory softness narrows. If transparency, penalty severity, institutional autonomy and enforcement speed do not keep pace with expansion, airlines may gradually operate closer to risk thresholds.

The Last Bit,

India’s skies may remain safe today.

The more consequential question is whether the regulatory architecture is assertive enough – structurally and operationally – to ensure they remain safe tomorrow.

India’s aviation sector is one of the fastest growing in the world. Passenger numbers are climbing. New airports are being built. Airlines are placing record aircraft orders.

But rapid expansion demands parallel investments  – in pilot training, maintenance infrastructure, spare parts ecosystems, regulatory staffing and independent oversight capacity. Safety in aviation is not binary. It is cumulative. It depends on thousands of small decisions taken daily – by airlines, regulators, ground staff and policymakers.

The issuance of 352 notices may indicate vigilance. The prevalence of repetitive defects may reflect operational pressure. The December cancellations exposed the fragility that emerges when compliance deadlines meet stretched capacity.

None of these alone prove that India’s skies are unsafe. Together, they suggest that the margin for complacency is narrowing.

For DGCA, as India’s aviation ambitions soar higher, the real measure of safety will not be how many notices are issued after violations occur, but whether systems are strong enough to prevent those violations from becoming patterns – and patterns from becoming crises.