Ahmedabad Air India crash isn't a problem of privatisation. Govt-run aviation is no better

The Print

5 hours ago

We don't really know why Flight 171 crashed, so it is premature to claim this resulted from cost-cutting or to blame 'systemic failures' as businessman Sabeer Bhatia has done. Yet critics are wasting no time in summoning the neoliberalism bogeyman . This knee-jerk reaction reveals more about ideological bias than genuine concern for passenger safety.
However, a close look at India's aviation history over the past 25 years reveals that this narrative is more fiction than fact. Since 2000, India has seen four significant airline crashes. Three of these disasters occurred under government ownership: Alliance Air Flight 7412 in 2000 (pilot error), Air India Express Flight 812 in 2010 (pilot error after runway overshoot), and Air India Express Flight 1344 in 2020 (runway overshoot in bad weather). Only Air India Flight 171 happened under private ownership, after the Tata Group acquired Air India in 2022. These State-owned airline crashes were attributed to specific operational factors like pilot error and adverse weather conditions. No one suggested that government ownership itself created safety risks or that bureaucratic inefficiency compromised passenger safety.
Any tragedy involving air travel inevitably becomes an opportunity for critics to push ideological agendas, particularly those sceptical of privatisation. The crash of Air India Flight 171 in Ahmedabad is no exception. The London-bound flight is one of India's deadliest aviation disasters in decades. Yet before investigators could even analyse the recovered black box, critics immediately blamed the tragedy on privatisation, citing 'profit over safety' concerns.
The breathtaking irony here is that the loudest voices condemning privatisation conveniently ignore the grim legacy of government-run aviation: Three catastrophic crashes and countless ignored warnings since 2000. They remain conspicuously silent when bureaucratic lethargy and political apathy claim lives, but seize upon the first tragedy under private ownership as incontrovertible proof of market villainy.
Despite these ideological distractions, the broader truth remains unmistakable: Air travel, especially in India, remains remarkably safe. Billions of passengers have travelled across India over the last 25 years with only four crashes, an impressive safety record by any standard.
Ultimately, if financial pressures genuinely threaten passenger safety, the real culprit is government policy rather than corporate greed.
Also read: Why do airplanes still crash?
The real safety threat
Socialist critics conveniently ignore that if financial pressure truly compromises safety, then government policies are the biggest culprit. Indian airlines operate under crushing regulatory and fiscal burdens that squeeze margins to dangerous levels.
Aviation turbine fuel (ATF) faces punitive taxation that cripples airline operations. As of mid-2025, ATF is hit by 11 per cent central excise duty plus up to 30 per cent state VAT. Since ATF remains excluded from GST, these taxes cascade, meaning fuel taxes often exceed 35 per cent of the base cost. This makes India one of the most expensive markets globally for airline fuel costs, which account for up to 45 per cent of an airline's operating expenses.
Add to this the maze of regulatory compliance costs, suboptimal slot policies, and threats of pricing interference, and you have a government-created environment where airlines struggle to maintain healthy cash flows. If the 'profit over safety' theory held any water, these government-imposed financial pressures would be the primary safety risk.
Yet somehow, private airlines operating under these same punitive conditions maintain better safety records than the government airlines that had none of these competitive pressures. This reveals the fundamental flaw in the socialist argument: Profit motive doesn't threaten safety; operational excellence and accountability under private ownership actually enhance it.
Also read: Don't let Ahmedabad crash become Air India's death knell. It'll hurt Brand India
The infrastructure challenge
These crashes also expose deeper problems with State-managed aviation infrastructure that go beyond individual airline operations.
Patna Airport obstructions: While the Alliance Air crash in 2000 was caused by pilot error, it prompted safety investigations that revealed serious infrastructure problems at Patna airport. The DGCA identified 101 obstructions, including trees that reduced the effective runway length, which made it one of the most dangerous airports in the country.
The Bihar government flat-out refused to cut the trees causing the obstruction, forcing airlines to operate with drastically reduced passenger loads. It took 12 years and the threat of a complete airport shutdown before they even cut a single tree. The government's apathy was staggering—they preferred risking airport closure over basic tree removal, despite knowing passengers' lives were at stake. Even after finally acting, lapses in pruning periodically persist till today. The airport operated without a valid license for years due to these unresolved obstructions.
This pattern reveals a chronic inability to maintain basic safety protocols. Tree obstruction and other safety hazards persist even two decades after the fatal accident, showing exactly how bureaucratic dysfunction compromises aviation infrastructure.
The Mangaluru runway extension: The Mangaluru crash exposed another critical infrastructure failure. Immediately after the 2010 crash that killed 158 people, the aviation ministry promised the runway would be extended by 1,000 metres to make it safer for aircraft operations. More than 14 years later, this extension still hasn't happened.
When asked to fund runway safety improvements after 158 deaths, the Karnataka government refused, explicitly stating, 'There is no direct revenue benefit from the airport to the state.' Meanwhile, the Airports Authority of India claimed 'shortage of funds' while investing elsewhere. What makes this worse is that AAI has been investing in ghost airports, which have had zero passengers for months, while refusing to fund safety improvements where 158 people died.
The Karnataka government's pattern of choosing money over safety is consistent. The mandatory 'safety basic strip' recommended by the DGCA also remains unimplemented. After the airport was privatised in 2021, the Airports Authority sought 32.97 acres for required safety buffers. But the Karnataka government again refused to provide land free of cost, arguing the private operator should pay.
Twice, the same government has explicitly prioritised financial considerations over passenger safety—the exact behaviour socialists falsely attribute to private companies.
The contrast is staggering: unlimited funds for vanity projects with zero passengers, but 'shortage of funds' for safety measures after mass casualties.
The Calicut 'murder': The 2020 Calicut crash is perhaps the most damning example of government negligence. This wasn't just 'challenging weather conditions'—this was a preventable disaster at an airport that aviation experts had been warning about for nearly a decade. The DGCA itself had designated Calicut as a 'critical airfield' and 'unsafe' for wet weather operations. Captain Mohan Ranganathan, a member of the Ministry of Civil Aviation's safety advisory committee, had warned in 2011 that the airport's tabletop runway design, inadequate buffer zones (90m instead of the recommended 240m), and lack of safety systems made it dangerous. The airport had multiple cracks in runways, pools of stagnant water, and excessive rubber deposits. The DGCA had even issued a show-cause notice in 2019 after finding these hazards. Yet nothing was done. The warnings were ignored for years, and as Ranganathan said after the crash, 'In my opinion, it is not an accident but a murder.'
The government's failure to follow through on basic safety infrastructure improvements—despite multiple tragedies and expert warnings—speaks volumes about the sluggish pace of State-led safety initiatives. Private airport operators face the same regulatory constraints, but they have stronger incentives to navigate these challenges proactively rather than wait for tragedies to force action. Inter-governmental coordination affecting aviation safety infrastructure is a recurring theme across many Indian airports—and it's a problem that government ownership of airlines cannot solve, because the airlines themselves don't control the airports.
Also read: Pilots flying your planes are stressed, sleep-deprived. 'It wasn't as intense earlier, now it's chaos'
Market forces drive safety
The impeccable safety record of private airlines like IndiGo demonstrates that market-driven safety improvements and accountability surpass government management. IndiGo operates over 1,800 flights daily and has carried hundreds of millions of passengers without a single fatal accident. When SpiceJet faced safety incidents in 2022, 44 per cent of domestic air passengers started avoiding the airline—market discipline worked exactly as it should. Airlines that crash don't stay in business, creating immediate consequences that government monopolies never faced.
India's aviation safety record demonstrates that air travel remains very safe when you consider the scale. Over the past 25 years, Indian airlines have operated millions of flights carrying billions of passengers. Four accidents over this period, in a country with challenging weather conditions, diverse topography, and rapidly expanding air traffic, show that aviation safety has been maintained despite massive growth.
Compare this to road transport in India—the contrast is stark. This safety record across India's aviation sector shows that market-driven aviation works.
Evidence-based safety policy
Real safety improvements come from understanding the complete picture: Infrastructure coordination failures between government agencies, policy pressures that squeeze airline margins, and market forces that reward operational excellence. The evidence shows that government apathy, willful negligence, and State-imposed financial pressures create the very risks that critics falsely attribute to privatisation.
Meanwhile, market accountability ensures immediate consequences for safety lapses through passenger avoidance, massive compensation payouts, and catastrophic aircraft losses—incentives that simply didn't exist under government monopoly.
It's easy and tempting to cast private airlines as villains to satisfy ideological biases, but tragedies deserve sober analysis, not sensationalism. Critics circling this tragedy are doing a disservice to the victims and their families by peddling predetermined narratives instead of waiting for facts. We should wait for the investigation to conclude, examine the actual causes, and have an honest conversation about aviation safety based on data, not dogma. The victims of Flight 171 deserve better than the lazy, predictable scapegoating of privatisation.
Ajay Mallareddy is co-founder of Hyderabad-based Centre for Liberty and the spokesperson for the Libertarian party of India. His X handle is @IndLibertarians. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)