The line from the famous song by Queen (Farrokh Bulsara), “Another One Bites the Dust”, appears to be the swansong for another airline in India. In the 1990s, an airline with promise, Damania Airways, went bust. This week, the Wadias declared insolvency for their airline, Go First, bringing down the curtains on another airline company. In its wake, we have hundreds of passengers, pilots and cabin crew stranded in various locations, and thousands of employees who have been left in the lurch with a long legal battle ahead of them to salvage what is owed to them. Employees of Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways are still struggling to get their dues while their owners and promoters live a life of luxury with zero accountability.
Are airlines and their owners/promoters the only ones to blame for these failures? I would put the blame squarely on the Ministry of Civil Aviation and its puppet, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The regular chest thumping acts where there are proclamations of India being the ‘fastest growing aviation sector’ also turn a blind eye to serious deficiencies in safety, the financial security of airlines, oversight audits by the DGCA to assess the financial health of airlines, and last but not the least, the inflated numbers game they play to project exponential growth in the aviation sector.
