Before the Air India crash: Violations that went unflagged, unpunished

The DGCA, India’s aviation regulator, finds itself in the dock after the tragic crash of Air India flight AI-171 at Ahmedabad on 12 June.

It is being accused of treating airlines with kid gloves and not doing enough to enforce its own regulations. The government also appears to be guilty of cutting budgets and not ensuring that critical positions in the DGCA are filled up.

The failure to stop encroachment of illegal structures around airports and to enforce height restrictions, now the subject of a PIL before the Supreme Court, is another area that has drawn attention.

Between 2018 and 2023, the DGCA published six surveillance reports that exposed a litany of safety violations by different airlines, which had falsified maintenance records, made use of untrained personnel and expired safety equipment, and were guilty of routine breach of aviation norms.

Yet, despite these damning findings, no airline was named, no penalties imposed and no systemic reforms mandated.

After 2023, the DGCA ceased publishing safety audits and stopped uploading incident reports, further eroding transparency.

Expansion sans regulation

The rapid expansion in the Indian aviation sector — from 66 million passengers in 2014 to 161 million in 2024 — has not been matched with a proportionate expansion in regulatory capacity. Budget cuts have been severe, with the ministry of civil aviation’s capital outlay plunging by 91 per cent in just one year.

This has led to critical vacancies, including a 30 per cent shortfall in air traffic controllers — hampering the DGCA’s ability to ensure effective oversight.

As per data tabled in Parliament, between 2020 and January 2025, Indian domestic carriers reported 2,461 technical faults, with Indigo Airlines alone accounting for more than half of them. Air India and its subsidiaries reported 389 faults, including serious safety breaches, such as pairing non-qualified crew on international flights.

Despite these violations, enforcement has been weak, and budget cuts continue.

The DGCA’s approach to audits has been fragmented and reactive, often triggered by incidents rather than proactive risk-based assessments. A glaring example emerged in 2023 when Air India was found to have fabricated internal safety audit reports at major airports with forged documents signed by unauthorised personnel and no evidence of actual inspections. This scandal, exposed by a whistleblower, not only highlighted airline malpractice but also the DGCA’s inability to detect and prevent such frauds.

Calls for reform have grown louder over the years. Aviation safety experts and stakeholders are demanding an independent Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) with statutory autonomy, enforcement powers and insulation from political and industry influence. Without such structural reforms, audits will remain mere eyewash, unable to restore trust or prevent future tragedies.

Building violations galore

Between 2020 and 2025, the issue of unauthorised structures in the vicinity of airports and buildings violating height restrictions around Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) has seen legal action.

Numerous buildings exceed the prescribed height limit. This obstructs the flight path of aircraft, posing a hazard during takeoff and landing. This long-standing concern was brought into sharper focus through a PIL filed in 2019 by aviation safety activist Yeshwant Shenoy, who urged the Bombay High Court to direct removal of these hazardous structures.

The scale of the problem is staggering. According to data tabled in Parliament, more than 1,800 obstacles — ranging from buildings to mobile towers — were found to violate height restrictions around airports across India, with Mumbai alone accounting for over 400. These encroachments not only compromise the safety of aircraft operations but also pose a direct threat to human life.

In 2017, the DGCA issued demolition orders for 49 identified obstacles — part of a larger list of over 110 structures flagged in surveys conducted by Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) and Airports Authority of India (AAI) between 2010 and 2011. However, enforcement lagged and many structures remain standing, with some owners filing appeals leading to delays in action.

The Bombay High Court intensified oversight in 2022 and directed the Mumbai suburban district collector to remove unauthorised portions of 48 buildings near the airport. The deputy collector of Kurla reported demolishing seven rooms, reducing heights of mobile antenna towers and removing 19 overhead water tanks from these buildings.

In March 2025, the Bombay HC reiterated the need for swift enforcement and directed the DGCA to expedite decisions on pending appeals and instruct the collector and municipal authorities to ensure removal of illegal structures. The issue has now reached the Supreme Court, where a PIL seeks urgent intervention. The petitioners argue that the failure of authorities to act expeditiously has created a dangerous environment for civil aviation, especially in densely populated urban centres. The court has sought responses from the DGCA, AAI and various state governments, signalling the gravity of the issue.

Aviation experts warn that even a single illegal structure in a flight path can have catastrophic consequences, especially during poor visibility or emergency situations.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) mandates obstacle limitation surfaces (OLS) around airports, but enforcement in India has been patchy at best. The lack of coordination between municipal authorities, state governments and aviation regulators has allowed violations to persist unchecked.

Even greenfield projects are compromised

Relatively newer airports too are not immune to this crisis. The Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru, a modern greenfield facility, once surrounded by open tracts of land, is witnessing rapid changes. What was once a buffer zone of agricultural land and low-rise housing — to protect air funnels — is being filled with high-rise residential and commercial towers as the city expands northwards.

Driven by population growth, infrastructure projects and increasing demand for real estate, the safe perimeter around the airport is shrinking.

Urban planners caution that unless zoning controls are strictly enforced, even airports designed with safety buffers will face the same challenges that plague older ones.

Disparities across cities

An analysis of AAI data reveals wide disparities in permissible construction heights near airports. For instance, at a distance of 4 km from the airport, the maximum approved building height in Mumbai is only 17.87 metre — compared to 42.14 metre in Vijayawada. Cities like Ahmedabad and Lucknow show minimal increase in height allowance with distance, while others like Chennai and Bhubaneswar are more generous the farther out one goes.

These inconsistencies complicate compliance and weaken uniform enforcement. “Without a national standardised approach, the responsibility of safeguarding the air funnel is falling through the cracks,” a former AAI official said.

The twin crises of regulatory failure and encroachment demand urgent, systemic reform.

The government’s recent decision to set up expert committees and strengthen the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) is a step in the right direction but falls short of the comprehensive overhaul required.

Recommendations from experts include:

• Establishing an independent Aviation Safety Oversight Commission with statutory powers, including enforcement and investigative authority

• Implementing risk-based, integrated audits that cover the entire aviation ecosystem

• Ensuring full transparency by regularly publishing audit and incident reports, and making enforcement actions public

• Strictly enforcing height restrictions around airports, with swift demolition of illegal structures and imposing penalties on violators

• Modernising the DGCA’s manpower, training and digital systems to enable proactive oversight

• Strengthening coordination between aviation regulators, municipal authorities and state governments to prevent and remove encroachments.

The Ahmedabad crash is a tragic reminder that when oversight fails, trust collapses — and lives are lost.