India’s aviation structure is a duopoly masquerading as a competitive market. When two airlines dominate, fares can be engineered, labour squeezed, service rationed, and safety buffers eroded.
Hoping for new entrants without making concrete supportive moves is somewhat naïve. India must rebuild the ecosystem with airport-level market share caps, transparent slot auctions, priority access for regional carriers, protections against predatory pricing
If the duopoly is not dismantled, every crisis will feel like a re-run.
Three major carriers dying in ten years is not bad luck. It is bad architecture. Indian aviation runs on wafer-thin margins, high Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) taxation, opaque slot allocation, chronic pilot shortages, an overburdened underpowered regulator, unpredictable fare regimes, and high capital costs.
Airlines don’t compete. They bleed, merge, or collapse.
Reform must be foundational:
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National ATF policy
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Transparent, merit-based slots
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A national pilot and manpower strategy
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Capital incentives for stability
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A regulator with investigative teeth
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Mandatory resilience buffers
India needs an independent fatigue-monitoring authority, monthly public safety dashboards, board Key Performance Indicator’s tied to resilience, not revenue, ring-fenced national pilot-training funds, verified pilot-strength matrices linked to route approvals, reengineered slot allocation, EASA-aligned norms, and a statutorily independent DGCA
Without these, India is flying on sheer luck, not policy.
• Scale without governance becomes a time bomb.
• Dominance without accountability becomes a national liability.
• Fatigue is a safety hazard, not an HR issue to be swept under the carpet .
• Regulators must regulate — especially when incumbents resist.
• Transparency is existential, not optional.
Aviation cannot be run on crisis management and cost-cutting. It needs redundancy, buffers, and respect for human limits. Ignore this, and the next collapse will not be surprising. It will be inevitable. And with higher costs all across. This meltdown is the cumulative failure of boards that slept, regulators that surrendered, managements that overreached, incentives that rewarded snacks over safety, and a nation with no aviation contingency architecture.
Fix aviation now. Pass an Aviation Resilience Bill by January 2026. The skies demand it. Fail, and the next meltdown may write its warnings in utter Chaos with wreckage strewn.
(Manoj Mohanka is a businessman who serves on several corporate boards. This is an opinion piece and the view’s expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
