For over a decade, India’s commercial aviation sector has been one of the fastest growing in the world. Yet, the government body tasked with keeping its skies safe, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), remains trapped in an outdated administrative structure.
Indian pilots, represented by the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP), have formally requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene. They want the government to replace the DGCA with an independent Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
Image generated via AI for representational purposes.
The pilots' central argument is straightforward: the DGCA is responsible for overseeing a massive, highly technical, and rapidly expanding airline market, but it lacks the freedom to hire enough experts or manage its own operations. What makes this demand striking is that India recognized these exact flaws in 2013 and proposed the same fix. Thirteen years later, the regulator is still fighting the same battle.
DGCA cannot fill the technical positions it needs
As of December 3, 2025, only 569 of DGCA's 1,063 sanctioned technical officer positions were filled. These include flight operations inspectors, airworthiness officers and other specialists responsible for checking whether airlines, aircraft and aviation operations meet safety requirements.
The government has been trying to fill these vacancies. Technical officers continue to be recruited through government channels such as UPSC and SSC. DGCA has also used consultants, officers on secondment and short-term contractual hiring when permanent recruitment has fallen short. Recruitment for operations officers and flight operations inspectors continued into 2026. The problem is that these measures have largely kept the same recruitment structure intact.
DGCA still has to compete with airlines and aviation companies for experienced pilots, engineers and safety professionals while relying heavily on government hiring processes and compensation structures. For specialists who can earn considerably more within the industry, a government regulatory job may be less attractive. FIP therefore wants the regulator to have greater control over recruitment and the ability to offer more competitive salaries. The pilots are arguing that the existing system itself has made those vacancies harder to fill. This leads us to the second problem.
DGCA cannot independently solve all of its own capacity problems
The DGCA operates directly under the Ministry of Civil Aviation. While it is tasked with enforcing safety rules, it does not have full authority over its own budget, staffing choices, or day-to-day administrative decisions.
In 2025, former DGCA chief Faiz Ahmed Kidwai formally requested greater administrative autonomy from the Civil Aviation Ministry, explaining that the constant need for ministry approvals created harmful operational delays. The ministry rejected the request, exposing a fundamental dilemma between autonomy and accountability
Its reasoning shows why making DGCA more independent is not straightforward- Government documents reported by Reuters showed that the ministry was concerned about DGCA's own internal accountability, including its inability in some cases to establish responsibility for delays and approval failures. More independence could allow an aviation regulator to recruit people, spend resources and make routine decisions faster but the government's concern was effectively that greater power also requires stronger internal accountability.
Stock Image used for representational purposes | Credits: Ministry of Civil Aviation
Recent conflict-of-interest concerns have reinforced that issue. By January 2026, 51 DGCA officials had disclosed 59 relatives working across aviation businesses. The ministry subsequently criticised how some potential conflicts had been handled.
Those concerns became more immediate in August 2026. The CBI registered a corruption case against former DGCA Director of Flying Training Captain Anil Gill, four aviation-linked companies and others over allegations of regulatory favouritism and abuse of official position. The FIR alleges that Gill extended undue favours to certain flying training organisations while companies linked to his relatives acquired training aircraft and subsequently leased them to favoured operators at significantly higher rates. One company allegedly earned more than ₹2.16 crore in lease rentals between 2021 and October 2023. The allegations remain under investigation.
The case makes the governance question surrounding greater DGCA autonomy harder to ignore. Giving a regulator greater freedom over staffing, finances and administrative decisions could help it operate faster, but it also increases the importance of strong conflict-of-interest rules, independent vigilance and clear accountability for regulatory decisions.
Capacity problems are also becoming visible in regulation
Recent events have shown why the question of regulatory capacity matters beyond vacancies and administrative processes.
During IndiGo’s December 2025 operational disruption, DGCA temporarily relaxed parts of new pilot fatigue requirements after the airline struggled to operate its schedule under the tighter rules. The regulator later cut IndiGo’s approved schedule, investigated its management and imposed a ₹22.2 crore penalty.
Stock Image used for representational purposes | Credits: OSM Aviation Academy
The subsequent government inquiry primarily blamed the airline’s planning and insufficient operational buffers. But the crisis also raised a separate question about DGCA’s own oversight. Before approving an airline’s schedule, the regulator is expected to assess whether it has the pilots and other resources required to operate it reliably. IndiGo had been preparing for the new fatigue rules for months, yet DGCA approved a larger winter schedule without the airline’s lack of crew resilience being addressed before operations began to unravel.
The regulator subsequently removed four Flight Operations Inspectors responsible for overseeing IndiGo and its preparations for the new rules, began an internal review of its own systems, and introduced more intensive monitoring of airlines, including regular checks on crew availability, roster integrity, operational buffers, systems and fatigue-rule compliance. The episode exposed the gap between writing a safety regulation and ensuring that airlines are ready to implement it: DGCA eventually intervened decisively, but only after thousands of flights had been disrupted, underscoring the need to identify such risks before they become operational crises.
India identified these problems 13 years ago
India identified these exact systemic failures more than a decade ago. In 2013, the government introduced the Civil Aviation Authority of India Bill. The goal was to dismantle the DGCA and create an autonomous body with the power to recruit directly, set competitive compensation, and manage its own finances.
Stock Image used for representational purposes | Credits: @27saurabhsinha on X
However, parliamentary committees criticized the bill for not offering true independence. Key clauses still required the authority to seek government approval for creating new posts, threatening to transfer old bottlenecks into a new agency.
The bill eventually lapsed. The difference today is the size of the market these unresolved problems sit underneath. FIP says India’s commercial fleet has now crossed 850 aircraft, while passenger traffic has exceeded 239 million. DGCA is also dealing with responsibilities extending into newer areas such as drones and advanced air mobility.
The Next Reform Has to Go Further
This does not mean DGCA has failed as a safety regulator. India’s ICAO Effective Implementation score improved from 69.95% to 85.49% following the 2022 safety oversight audit. The question is whether incremental fixes are enough for what comes next.
For years, the government has tried to fill vacancies, add contractual staff and improve capacity while keeping the broad regulatory structure intact. FIP is now asking whether India has reached the point where the structure itself needs to change.
Creating a Civil Aviation Authority would not automatically solve DGCA’s problems. But if India does revisit the idea it abandoned in 2013, the test will be whether the new regulator actually gains the ability to hire the people it needs, control its resources and make decisions faster while being held accountable for how it uses that independence.