Up in the air: On non-scheduled operators, aviation safety

A series of flight incidents within a month — two crashes involving small aircraft, at Baramati (Maharashtra) in January, and near Simaria (Jharkhand), and a helicopter crashlanding in the Andamans — is a reminder that charter aviation in India cannot be treated as a lightly regulated adjunct to commercial flying. The troubled charter aviation sector is expanding and the need for oversight has become critical. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) website lists 133 non-scheduled operators, or NSOs (updated till September 30, 2025), using a mix of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. The meeting on February 24 that the DGCA held with all NSO permit holders was thus long overdue. The proposal to rank charter operators based on safety performance and the requirement for NSOs to disclose critical safety information on their websites, which covers aircraft age, maintenance history, and pilot experience, could be the first steps towards basic transparency. Equally significant is the DGCA’s line that commercial considerations must not be allowed to affect safety, a pointer to pressures to prioritise VIP schedules and even business commitments. The regulator’s focus on maintenance standards, particularly among operators with in-house maintenance, repair, and operation facilities, is another critical, but late, intervention. Cockpit voice recorder audits, fuel records and ADS-B data scrutiny as well as enforcement of flight duty time limitations are pivotal, though belated, steps. Most importantly, holding senior management accountable for systemic failures is another corrective measure.

Adverse weather has been a contributory factor in several charter and non-scheduled flight accidents, which includes the Bell 430 helicopter crash in Andhra Pradesh in 2009 and the Beechcraft C-90 King Air accident in 2001 that claimed the lives of prominent political leaders. The DGCA has specified that recurrent training of pilots must focus on ‘weather awareness strategies and decision-making in uncontrolled environments’. The rollout of safety audits, with a physical workshop on safety, may help align all operators with the safety mandate. However, the fact is that there are some operators with poor safety records. There are also gaps in pilot training and experience on type, scant simulator training centres in India, a dearth of quality instructors and weak audits. It is acknowledged that the regulator itself is short-staffed in certain safety critical departments. Earlier this month, the Civil Aviation Minister spoke of conducting a “very thorough study” of flight operations by non-scheduled operators and to uncontrolled airfields. But for such a safety drive to lock into place there has to be consistent enforcement and committed transparency.