When One Airline Sneezes, India Catches a Cold: Why India Needs an Aviation Planning Authority
India did not witness an airline incident. It witnessed a systems failure. One bad day inside a single private airline was enough to throw airports across the country into chaos. That is not just a story about Indigo. It is a story about how India has built aviation without a brain that plans for resilience, redundancy and shocks. In the United States and Europe, that planning function is embedded in institutions. In India, it barely exists.
India’s recent aviation disruption has therefore exposed something much deeper than scheduling glitches or crew shortages. It has revealed a structural imbalance where one airline carries a disproportionate share of the system, while no public authority is clearly responsible for asking the most basic question of all: what happens to the country if the system’s largest player stumbles, even briefly?
How India Drifted Into Overdependence
India did not consciously decide to make one airline the backbone of domestic aviation. It drifted there. Over the last decade, a series of collapses and retreats cleared the field. Kingfisher vanished in scandal. Jet Airways buckled under debt. Go First halted operations. Other carriers shrank or repositioned themselves as premium or niche players.
In parallel, governments across political dispensations adopted a hands off doctrine. They would not be seen bailing out private airlines with public money. They would not repeat the Air India experience of funding losses indefinitely. If a carrier could not survive market forces, it was allowed to fail. On paper, this sounded fiscally prudent.
In practice, this created a concentration of market share in the hands of the airline that was operationally lean, financially disciplined and aggressive in expansion. The policy choice was not to pick a winner explicitly, but to let the market crown one. The result is the same. India became structurally dependent on a single private airline, without fully appreciating the systemic risk that came with that dependence.
Fragmented Governance, Missing Planning
India does not lack aviation regulators. It lacks aviation planners.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation focuses on safety, licensing and technical compliance. The Ministry of Civil Aviation frames policy, oversees public sector entities and announces schemes. The Airports Economic Regulatory Authority sets airport tariffs. The Competition Commission occasionally examines mergers or allegations of collusion.
Each body operates within its own mandate. None of them is explicitly responsible for national capacity planning, redundancy standards, shock absorption or continuity of connectivity when a major carrier falters. There is no institution that wakes up every morning with the clear job of asking where demand is going, whether capacity is diversified enough and how resilient the system is to disruption.
This fragmentation leads to blind spots. An airline may be perfectly compliant with safety norms, airports may be investing in terminals, and fares may be left to market dynamics, yet the overall system can remain fragile because no one is mandated to see the whole picture.
What The United States Does Differently
The United States is not a model of perfection, but its aviation architecture is built around the idea that the system matters as much as individual carriers.
The Federal Aviation Administration is not only a safety regulator. It also manages the national airspace system and plays a central role in planning how traffic flows across airports, sectors and routes. The Department of Transportation takes responsibility for consumer protection, connectivity and continuity, especially when airlines enter distress or when remote communities risk losing air service.
Mechanisms like the Essential Air Service program support flights to small towns that would not be commercially attractive on their own, but are strategically important for social and economic reasons. Slot allocation at congested airports is managed under transparent rules that recognise that runway access is a public resource, not something that can be quietly monopolised.
In addition, competition oversight is serious. Airline mergers, alliances and code share agreements are scrutinised not only for pricing effects but for long term impact on network diversity and consumer choice. The outcome is not a perfectly competitive market, but a system with multiple large carriers and enough diversity that the failure or disruption of one airline does not paralyse the country.
How Europe Builds Resilience By Design
Europe takes a slightly different path, but the underlying philosophy is similar. Planning and resilience are embedded into the structure.
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency sets harmonised safety and certification standards across member states. National regulators such as the UK Civil Aviation Authority or France’s DGAC enforce norms locally but work within a common framework. This combination avoids fragmentation of basic rules while preserving local capacity.
Crucially, many major European airports rely on independent slot coordinators. These entities allocate take off and landing slots under clear guidelines designed to prevent any one airline from capturing more than a sustainable share of capacity. Slots are treated as part of critical infrastructure, not as a private asset that can be hoarded without regard to system resilience.
European regulations also recognise that the market alone will not maintain connectivity to less profitable regions. Public service obligation mechanisms and carefully structured subsidies are used to keep routes alive to islands, mountain regions and sparsely populated areas. The goal is not to nationalise airlines, but to ensure that geography and profitability do not entirely dictate who gets access to air travel.
The result is a system with several strong carriers, robust low cost competitors and a web of regional airlines. There are failures and disruptions, but the design makes it unlikely that a single airline’s internal crisis will create a nationwide aviation emergency.
Principles The West Gets Right
The differences between Western models and the Indian model are not about ideology, but about design principles.
The first principle is that redundancy is a policy objective. It is not treated as an accidental by product of competition. Authorities deliberately aim for multiple viable carriers, overlapping routes and spare capacity so that shocks can be absorbed.
The second principle is that slots and connectivity are public goods. Access to airports and routes is not something that can be left entirely to first movers or the strongest balance sheets. Rules are crafted to ensure that newcomers, regional carriers and secondary players have a fair chance to access infrastructure.
The third principle is that crisis planning is part of normal governance, not an ad hoc response. Scenarios like severe weather, airport outages, labour unrest or cyber incidents are rehearsed on paper and in simulations long before they occur in real life. Responsibilities are predefined.
The fourth principle is that data driven forecasting is routine. Regulators and planners track demand, fleet orders, pilot pipelines, maintenance capacity and airport expansion in an integrated way. This allows them to see pressure points before they become failures.
India’s Efficient Airline, Fragile System
None of this diminishes the operational achievements of India’s leading private carrier. It has built a reputation for efficient turnarounds, disciplined cost control and relatively reliable service compared to many past Indian airlines. It is not the villain of the story.
The problem lies in how the policy environment converted one company’s success into a structural single point of failure. Passengers, airports and even schedules became excessively dependent on the smooth functioning of one airline’s internal systems. When those systems faced strain, the ripple effects were amplified rather than absorbed.
A resilient aviation system cannot depend on the uninterrupted performance of one corporate balance sheet or one crew rostering platform. It needs institutional guardrails that limit overdependence, spread risk and ensure that the failure of one node does not bring down the network.
The Case For An Indian Aviation Planning Authority
India does not need to nationalise airlines. It does need to nationalise the responsibility for aviation planning.
An Aviation Planning Authority for India would not be another layer of red tape duplicating what DGCA or the Ministry already do. Its mandate would be different and sharply defined. It would exist to think about capacity, redundancy, connectivity and shock resilience at the national level.
Such an authority would build an integrated picture of where demand for air travel is growing, how many aircraft and pilots are likely to be available, which airports will hit saturation and where new infrastructure is most urgent. It would be tasked with ensuring that capacity is not merely maximised, but diversified across multiple carriers and regions.
It would also define basic resilience standards. These could include thresholds beyond which any airline crossing a certain market share on key routes must demonstrate backup systems, extra crew buffers and contingency plans. The objective would not be to punish success, but to ensure that success does not turn into systemic fragility.
A Concrete Agenda For Reform
What would such an authority actually do in practice in India, beyond producing reports and holding conferences?
First, it would prepare a rolling ten to fifteen year aviation capacity roadmap, linking fleet projections, airport development, airspace management and regional connectivity schemes like UDAN. This roadmap would be public, so that airlines, investors and states can align their own strategies with a transparent national view.
Second, it would design a more structured slot allocation framework for congested airports. This framework would recognise that runway access is a strategic asset and would prevent excessive concentration by any one carrier, while still rewarding operational efficiency and long term commitment.
Third, it would develop clear protocols for handling airline distress or exit. The Jet Airways and Go First episodes showed how disruptive sudden collapses can be. A planning authority could coordinate phased capacity replacement, temporary support for affected routes and communication with passengers to reduce chaos.
Fourth, it would integrate regional connectivity into a coherent network. Instead of treating smaller routes as scattered experiments, the authority could ensure that they connect logically into larger hubs, supporting both commercial viability and balanced development.
Fifth, it would coordinate national disruption playbooks. Fog seasons, major system outages, cyber incidents and prolonged labour disputes are not rare exceptions in modern aviation. Pre negotiated frameworks for schedule rationalisation, passenger re accommodation and sharing of capacity can turn what would otherwise be a breakdown into a managed disruption.
Answering The Objections
There will be predictable objections to such an authority, and they deserve serious answers.
One concern is that this could become backdoor control over airlines. The answer lies in sharp mandate design. The authority should not set fares, meddle in daily operations or decide which airline flies where on a micro level. Its role is to plan the framework, not to run the business.
Another concern is that the market will adjust on its own if one airline suffers. Experience suggests that such adjustment is slow, painful and often comes after serious damage to passenger confidence and regional economies. Planning is not a substitute for markets, but a complement that reduces the social cost of adjustment.
A third concern is bureaucratic overreach. This is real, and it is why the authority must be built with technical expertise, transparent metrics and regular public reporting. Its effectiveness should be judged on measurable outcomes such as delay trends, cancellation patterns, route continuity and resilience indicators, not on the volume of regulations it issues.
The Political Blind Spot
One reason India has not moved in this direction is political memory. The public anger over Kingfisher’s collapse, the fatigue with Air India’s long losses and the desire to avoid being seen as bailing out private promoters have all pushed governments toward a philosophy of minimal involvement.
Yet this caution has created a new kind of exposure. By refusing to be seen as protecting any airline, the state has inadvertently failed to protect the aviation system itself. When disruption strikes, citizens do not differentiate between the responsibilities of a private company and those of the government. They simply see a country where essential infrastructure has failed them.
The way forward is to change the conversation. Planning is not a favour to airlines. It is a duty to passengers and to the broader economy that depends on reliable air connectivity.
Building A Lean But Strong Planning Institution
If India chooses to move in this direction, it must be careful not to create a bulky, slow moving bureaucracy. The Aviation Planning Authority should be lean, data driven and staffed by professionals who understand networks, logistics, economics and risk, alongside regulatory experience.
It could be structured as an independent body with a clear mandate to work with DGCA, the Ministry, airport operators and state governments. Its tools should include access to real time operational data, the ability to commission studies, and the authority to recommend slot rules and resilience standards that other regulators then implement.
Public dashboards tracking delays, cancellations, load factors and capacity by carrier and region can anchor accountability. When citizens can see how the system is performing, pressure to maintain and improve resilience becomes continuous rather than episodic.
From Chalta Hai To What If
India’s aviation system has grown rapidly. It has also grown unevenly. For too long, the underlying philosophy has been to let growth happen where it can and to react only when something breaks. That is the essence of a chalta hai mindset applied to national infrastructure.
A mature aviation nation thinks in terms of what if. What if the largest airline faces an internal crisis. What if a major airport is knocked offline for days. What if a cyber incident cripples a key system. What if fuel prices spike or demand patterns change suddenly.
The goal of an Aviation Planning Authority would not be to eliminate all risk. That is neither possible nor desirable. The goal would be to ensure that when the inevitable shocks arrive, one airline’s bad day does not become a national crisis.
