DGCA Initiates Air Safety Overhaul, But Will Old Execution Gaps Remain?

Days after the devastating crash of Air India Flight AI-171 in Ahmedabad that killed 271 people — including 241 onboard and 30 on the ground — the Ministry of Civil Aviation, along with the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), announced a “comprehensive national civil aviation safety plan.”

Promising sweeping changes to the industry’s standard operating procedures (SOPs), the new safety plan is supposedly an overhaul of the way India intends to regulate, inspect, and investigate aviation operations.

The London-bound Boeing 787-8 crashed just minutes after takeoff from Ahmedabad airport on June 12. While investigations are ongoing, preliminary information suggests a mix of mechanical issues and operational lapses.

The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau’s (AAIB) preliminary report revealed that both engine fuel-control switches on AI171 were unintentionally flipped to “CUTOFF” within seconds of takeoff, starving both engines of fuel. Despite attempts to restart them, thrust didn’t recover before the crash.

Importantly, the report confirmed no mechanical or maintenance faults, no fuel quality issues, and no medical or substance concerns with the pilots.

Now, regulators are moving fast. According to a senior DGCA official, approval has been granted to fast-track the recruitment and deployment of additional inspectors and investigators to bolster oversight amid India's rapidly growing aircraft fleet.

“These measures are aligned with India’s State Safety Programme (SSP) and ICAO’s Global Aviation Safety Plan,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is a United Nations agency that sets global standards and regulations for aviation safety, security, efficiency, and environmental protection.

While the new safety plan aims to fix long-standing gaps in oversight and bring India’s aviation safety standards in line with global norms, industry experts remain sceptical. They point to decades of systemic neglect and poor enforcement that just another new set of rules will not solve.

“How could they create a checklist when not even all the flight recorders were recovered? These checklists don’t enhance safety. They’re knee-jerk reactions that led to unnecessary disruptions, and passengers bore the brunt of it,” Aurobindo Handa, former investigator with the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), told The Core.

Inside the New Blueprint

As per the DGCA official, the revised safety plan includes the following measures:

Risk-Based Surveillance: Instead of checking all airlines and flights on a fixed schedule (like once every few months), the focus will now be on safety checks on airlines, aircraft, or routes that seem riskier, based on data like past incidents, complaints, or maintenance issues.

Training and Capacity Building: Upgraded, recurrent training modules for inspectors, including safety management systems, modern aircraft systems, and human factors.

Accident Investigation Fund: A dedicated National Accident Investigation Fund to ensure truly independent, adequately resourced investigations, aligned with ICAO Annexe 13 standards.

The ICAO Annexe 13 lays down global rules for how aircraft accidents should be investigated — independently, thoroughly, and without bias. While India has adopted these rules in law, investigations often lack full independence due to limited resources and overlap between the regulator (DGCA) and the investigator (AAIB).

The proposed fund, the DGCA claimed, aims to fix this by ensuring AAIB has the money and independence needed to meet ICAO standards fully.

In the immediate aftermath of the AI-171 crash, the DGCA issued a safety checklist to all scheduled operators around June 13. The circular, though not made public, directed airlines to carry out urgent inspections on critical systems such as tyres, brakes, flight control mechanisms, and maintenance record-keeping.

It also mandated the DGCA to double-check that the airline maintenance engineers working on aircraft are properly trained, certified, and doing their jobs correctly and required additional layers of cross-verification before aircraft dispatch.

Old Plan, New Bottle

The civil aviation safety plan — also referred to as India’s National Aviation Safety Plan (NASP) — was first officially presented to ICAO in 2018, when DGCA launched its inaugural NASP covering the 2018–2022 period, aligned with ICAO’s Global Aviation Safety Plan (GASP).

The plan was only partially implemented. In the absence of a fully risk-based framework, India continued relying on traditional regulatory tools — Civil Aviation Requirements (CARs), routine inspections, AAIB-led investigations, and post-incident fixes, which lacked the integrated, proactive approach that NASP and SSP are designed to deliver.

However, India’s push for structured, ICAO-compliant safety oversight goes back further. The country became one of the early adopters of SSP, aiming to integrate regulations, risk management, and safety assurance consistent with ICAO guidance.

How are the SSP and ICAO’s Global Aviation Safety Plan different?

The SSP is a country-specific framework that outlines how a nation like India manages aviation safety across regulators, airlines, airports, and more. SSP is developed and maintained by the national aviation authority of each country — in India’s case, it’s the DGCA.

It puts in place systems for identifying and mitigating safety risks. In contrast, ICAO’s Global Aviation Safety Plan provides the global roadmap and safety goals that all countries are expected to follow. The SSP is essentially each country’s way of implementing those global standards locally — adapting international guidance to its aviation environment.

While these policies have existed on paper, implementation is the bigger problem.

"The civil aviation safety plan has existed for a while now. Yet no government seriously implemented it. We had submitted the safety plan to ICAO long ago—so what’s new now? The real issue is follow-through. You can’t just have a policy on paper; you need to actually act on it," Mark Martin, aviation expert, told The Core.

Not just that, similar safety reform proposals have indeed been raised in the past, particularly after ICAO’s 2017 audit and the Kozhikode runway overrun in 2020. But there have been key implementation challenges.

So what kept these reforms from happening earlier?

“Procedural delays in manpower sanction and recruitment. Budgetary constraints in creating a dedicated investigation fund and hiring specialised investigators. Resistance from some stakeholders to fully independent oversight mechanisms. These are now being actively addressed through policy-level prioritisation and increased allocations,” the DGCA official said.

Profit Over Safety

Not everyone is convinced by the flurry of reforms. The question is, why did the new plan have to come from such a massive accident?

“The signs were all there. Reports of worn-out tyres, lack of certified engineering staff, and dubious maintenance practices had been surfacing quietly for months. What was lacking was action,” Vandana Singh, chairperson of the Aviation Cargo Federation of Aviation Industry in India (FAII), told The Core.

Aviation insiders had been voicing concerns about under-maintained aircraft, inadequate engineering checks, and pressure to keep planes flying to meet commercial goals long before the Air India crash

“There was 100% negligence on Air India’s part. DGCA had issued warnings on June 3 and 5. Air India was even summoned to court. If regular A-checks, C-checks, and D-checks were being conducted properly, we wouldn’t be here,” Singh said.

She’s equally critical of the airline’s skewed priorities. “They focused on profitability over safety. That’s shameful. You’re playing with human lives.”

From Neglect to Urgency

CK Govil, President of The Air Cargo Agents Association of India (ACAAI), believes the crash has jolted the system into action. “Earlier, both airlines and ministry officials were negligent. Now they’re following up aggressively—recruiting, inspecting, and correcting lapses.”

But the urgency comes after years of systemic failure.

India’s civil aviation safety ecosystem has long suffered from:

• A poor inspector-to-aircraft ratio
• Overlapping roles between DGCA and AAI
• Delayed implementation of ICAO audit recommendations
• Lack of transparency in safety audits

What are the current regulations governing aircraft inspections and accident investigations?

According to the DGCA, there will be upgraded training modules for inspectors, along with training on modern aircraft systems and human factors.

This, however, hasn’t put the industry at ease. “Any competent system should be predictive, not reactive. Instead of real reform, the regulators often distract leadership with cosmetic fixes,” said Handa.

Systemic Gaps, Not One-Off Failures

The root problem is not individual errors but a broken system. Even with detailed rulebooks, a lack of skilled staff, incomplete documentation, and commercial pressure to keep aircraft flying often leads to corners being cut.

“Most of the time, it’s not the technician’s fault. It’s a systemic failure—an absence of functioning SMS, unclear responsibilities, or no one willing to halt a flight that shouldn't operate,” the DGCA official said.

India's aircraft maintenance protocols are strong on paper: pre-flight line checks, base maintenance schedules, and compliance with OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) directives—technical instructions issued by aircraft makers like Boeing or Airbus.

“I don’t question the Tatas’ intent. But a lack of supervision is unacceptable. That’s where these lapses happen,” Handa added.

What The Industry Must Do

Experts say regulators can’t go it alone. “Regular audits aren’t enough. What we need are surprise inspections. That’s what brings real discipline. And there must be zero tolerance for safety violations,” Singh added.

According to officials, the regulator (DGCA) is working on a four-pronged action plan:

Legislative Reforms to give AAIB true autonomy in investigations.

Transparency Measures: Publishing audit results and corrective actions.

External Reviews: Third-party audits and ICAO peer reviews of DGCA itself.

Full Risk-Based Surveillance: Transitioning fully to a performance-based safety oversight system, as mandated under ICAO Annex 19, which outlines how states should proactively manage safety risks using data and performance metrics.

“Airlines need to stop seeing DGCA as an advisory and start working with them to institutionalise safety. This needs industry-wide ownership,” Govil said.

India’s aviation market is growing faster than almost any in the world, with record aircraft orders, new airports, and swelling passenger numbers. But that growth means little if trust in safety isn’t restored.

As Martin puts it: “The systems aren’t broken—they were never implemented. Fixing that isn’t about new rules. It’s about making sure existing ones are followed—every single day, on every single flight.”