Capt. Amit Singh FRAeS, Founder & Director, Safety Matters Foundation
For eight years, India’s accident investigator has been writing down the regulator’s failures. Approvals that should never have been granted. Audits that found nothing wrong months before a crash. Findings closed on paper and left open on the ground. Then it sent those findings to the regulator, and nothing happened.
Safety Matters Foundation read every final report the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has published for occurrences between 2018 and 2025, all 129 of them. In 28 of the 54 accidents, the report itself documents a failing by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Those 28 accidents killed 69 people and seriously injured 99.
These are not our accusations. They are AAIB’s findings, in AAIB’s words.
The record
Flying schools, helicopters, airlines, charter operators, state aircraft. The failings are not confined to one corner of Indian aviation, and neither are the deaths.
Kozhikode: ten years of warnings
On 7 August 2020, Air India Express flight 1344 overran the tabletop runway at Kozhikode. Twenty-one people died and 76 were seriously injured. It was almost a replay of Mangalore in 2010, when another Air India Express jet overran another tabletop runway and 158 people died.
AAIB’s Kozhikode report is the most damning document the regulator has ever had written about it. It found that DGCA had been “accepting low DFDR monitoring figures” with safety audits “closed without any follow up action”. It found that DGCA did not carry out surveillance of flights to critical airfields and red-eye flights. And it recorded that officials at DGCA headquarters “did not agree to come and meet the Investigation Team”.
Kedarnath: three warnings, fifteen dead
In October 2022 a Bell 407 crashed at Garud Chatti near Kedarnath, killing seven. AAIB found the rules for operating from the Kedarnath helipad “vague and not conducive for safe operations”. Six months later, in April 2023, a man was killed at the Kedarnath helipad itself, and AAIB again found the provision “not conducive for safe operations”. In June 2025 another Bell 407 went down near Gaurikund. Seven more people died. AAIB’s report on that crash notes that “some of the issues raised by AAIB in their report were not addressed” in DGCA’s revised circular.
Audits that look away
In October 2019 a Cessna 172 trainer crashed near Sultanpur in Telangana, killing two. DGCA had audited the flying school three months earlier and found no operational safety problems. After the crash, DGCA audited it again. AAIB’s verdict on that second audit:
In Ghatkopar, Mumbai, in June 2018, a King Air crashed into a construction site, killing five, including a pedestrian. AAIB found DGCA had issued the operator’s permit “without an adequate safety mechanism being validated”, and that audit non-conformities were closed without anything changing on the ground.
At Vijayawada in 2021, AAIB found that the same audit findings had appeared three years running, closed every time, and every time graded Level II. At Dhanbad in 2023, it found DGCA had never overseen the glider school at all:
The black hole
AAIB’s 129 reports contain 606 safety recommendations; 259 are addressed to DGCA. Under AAIB’s own published procedure, DGCA must reply within 90 days and AAIB must judge whether the reply is adequate. Not one of those replies, and not one of those judgements, has ever been made public.
The reports themselves show what happens. In 11 of them, AAIB records that earlier recommendations had still not been implemented. After the Guna trainer accident in 2024, AAIB noted it had already recommended that DGCA mandate recording of radio communication between aircraft and ATC, and that “the same recommendation is still pending”.
In 2020 I asked AAIB, under the RTI Act, what action had followed its findings against DGCA in two fatal accidents. The answer, for both, was four words: “Matter pertains to DGCA.” The investigator finds that the regulator failed, and hands the finding to the regulator. Nobody else checks.
Only one side ever answers
When an accident happens, DGCA acts against the operator, and it should. Within days of the Ahmedabad crash in June 2025, it ordered Air India to remove three officials from crew-scheduling roles. But when AAIB documents that DGCA’s own approval, audit or rule failed, there is no equivalent. We could find no public record of action against any DGCA official for any of the failings documented in these 28 accidents.
A safety system in which only one side is ever accountable will keep producing the same accidents.
A regulator that cannot close what it finds
Parliament’s transport committee reported that DGCA’s own inspectors raised 4,692 safety findings between January and April 2025. By April, 3,747, four in five, were still open. Thirty-seven were Level I: an immediate danger to safety. Meanwhile, 787 of DGCA’s 1,630 sanctioned posts are vacant. A regulator that cannot staff itself cannot close what it finds, and the hazards it leaves open come back as accidents.
Even the investigator is stretched
After Kozhikode, AAIB was told to build its own cadre of permanent investigators and a properly equipped flight-recorder laboratory. In August 2025 the Government told Parliament those recommendations had been implemented. Two months earlier, when AI171 crashed at Ahmedabad, AAIB drew on DGCA officers for the investigation and needed equipment from the US NTSB to read the recorders. A recommendation marked “implemented” is not the same as a capability that exists.
The loop is broken
Safety management works on one principle: every hazard has an owner, and someone checks that the owner fixed it. In India the loop stops at DGCA. The investigator’s findings go in; nothing comes out; and the same hazards return in the next report.
What must change
None of this needs a new law to begin. It needs four decisions.
See all 28 accidents, and what AAIB found about DGCA in each
| Date | Aircraft / place | DGCA failing documented by AAIB (SMF summary) | Killed | Seriously injured |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-01 | VT-PWA Bombay High (offshore), near Mumbai | Audit report never given to the operator; no debrief | 7 | 0 |
| 2018-06 | VT-UPZ Ghatkopar, Mumbai | Operating permit granted without a validated safety system; audit faults left uncorrected | 5 | 3 |
| 2019-07 | VT-SYK Mumbai airport | DGCA audits missed serious safety weaknesses | 0 | 0 |
| 2019-08 | VT-HDX Moldi village, Uttarkashi, Uttarakhand | DGCA inspectors did not perform their assigned relief-operations role | 3 | 0 |
| 2019-08 | VT-SVK Tikochi village, Uttarkashi, Uttarakhand | No guidelines or coordination for relief flights | 0 | 1 |
| 2019-10 | VT-RGF Sultanpur village, Telangana | Audits checked paperwork only; post-accident audit aimed at resuming flying | 2 | 0 |
| 2020-01 | VT-CAF Near Dhana Aerodrome, Sagar (MP) | Night-flying procedure submitted in 2013 never acted on | 2 | 0 |
| 2020-02 | VT-GLE Dumka | Glider circulars not available to training institutes | 1 | 1 |
| 2020-06 | VT-ENF Birasal, Odisha | Instructor approved despite known weaknesses; flawed safety manual accepted | 2 | 0 |
| 2020-08 | VT-AXH Kozhikode | Flight-data monitoring accepted without follow-up; rule not revised after 2010 crash | 21 | 76 |
| 2020-09 | VT-IGE Azamgarh district, U.P. | No weather guidelines for flying schools | 1 | 0 |
| 2021-02 | VT-GHE Vijayawada Airport | Same audit findings closed three years running | 0 | 0 |
| 2021-05 | VT-MPQ Gwalior Airport (IAF base) | Audit finding dropped; manual and simulator oversight lapses | 0 | 2 |
| 2021-06 | VT-IYX Hubli Airport, Karnataka | No DGCA rule for post-incident medical tests, so the crew was never tested | 0 | 0 |
| 2021-07 | VT-BRP Satpura jungle near Vardi village, Shirpur | DGCA circular silent on recording radio calls at uncontrolled airfields | 1 | 1 |
| 2022-01 | VT-AMU Agricultural field near Aligarh Aerodrome | Faulty training manual approved and renewed repeatedly | 0 | 0 |
| 2022-02 | VT-FAO Near Thungathurthi village, Nalgonda, Telangana | Earlier AAIB recommendations on radio recording never implemented by DGCA | 1 | 0 |
| 2022-05 | VT-SLH En-route Durgapur | Aircraft released to lessor without AAIB clearance | 1 | 3 |
| 2022-05 | VT-CHG Raipur Airport | Safety manual unapproved; surveillance inadequate | 2 | 0 |
| 2022-06 | VT-PWI Sagar Kiran offshore helideck, Mumbai offshore | Flotation equipment not checked at inspection or certification | 4 | 2 |
| 2022-10 | VT-RPN Garud Chatti, near Kedarnath Helipad | Kedarnath operating rules vague and unsafe | 7 | 0 |
| 2023-01 | VT-PTE Umari Village near Rewa, M.P. | Obsolete circular left in force; night-flying rules unclear | 1 | 1 |
| 2023-02 | VT-RGT Thiruvananthapuram Airport | No rule covering student pilots in this situation | 0 | 0 |
| 2023-03 | VT-GDI Dhanbad Airport | No oversight of the glider school; licences issued improperly | 0 | 1 |
| 2023-04 | VT-RNK Kedarnath helipad | No one responsible for supervising Kedarnath helipad | 1 | 0 |
| 2023-09 | VT-DBL Mumbai Airport | DGCA audits found no significant safety issues | 0 | 8 |
| 2024-03 | VT-CHP Guna Aerodrome, Madhya Pradesh | Radio recording still not required despite earlier AAIB recommendation | 0 | 0 |
| 2025-06 | VT-BKA Near Gaurikund, Uttarakhand | Revised circular ignored points AAIB had raised earlier | 7 | 0 |
| 28 accidents | 69 | 99 |
Plain-language summaries by Safety Matters Foundation. AAIB’s exact words and section references are in the full report.
Safety improves when hazards have owners. Today, too many of the hazards AAIB identifies have none. Until someone is made responsible for closing them, the reports will keep describing the same failures, in new accidents, with new names.
All counts are Safety Matters Foundation’s analysis of AAIB’s published final reports, 2018–2025; quotations are verbatim, with section references in the full report. Parliamentary figures are from the Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture. “No public record” means none was found; the authorities can correct the record by publishing it.
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