It was on January 27, 2022, that the erstwhile government-run national carrier Air India formally came into the hands of the Tata group, forever shedding its public persona. It was a moment of great relief for the Indian government which was struggling trying to get the airline to compete unsuccessfully and a moment of pride and exhilaration for the Tata group, which reclaimed ownership of a brand and product created and shaped by its patriarch JRD Tata.
The turnaround got off to a shaky start , with the group taking time to get a new management team in place. The airline’s incumbent CEO Campbell Wilson took over the reins only in July 2022, bringing with him a new head of safety Henry Donohoe; the duo and a few other senior level executives from various Tata companies set about trying to turn the company around. The management placed one of the largest aircraft orders in India’s aviation history, spent a mini-fortune on rebranding, and merged Vistara into Air India, and Air Asia India into its regional low-fare airline Air India Express.
To say that things haven’t gone exactly as the group might have anticipated is an understatement. Through 2023 and 2024, the airline faced criticism from most passengers, particularly those who experienced its long haul product. It also received several sharp raps on the knuckles from the safety regulator. And it encountered a surfeit of embarrassing incidents.
In late 2022, a scandal where one passenger allegedly urinated on another on one of the airline’s international flights held the nation in rapt, albeit disgusted attention. In 2023, two incidents -- one on a flight to New York and another to San Francisco which had to perform an emergency landing in Russia -- threw the spotlight on the airline’s engineering and technical lacunae. In September 2023, a father and daughter duo traveling in economy class reported a total breakdown of basic amenities on board : broken seats, non-functional entertainment screens, unhygienic and “smelly” washrooms, and rude staff. More recently, in January, a Delhi consumer court held the airline liable for “deficiency in service” and ordered a compensation of ₹1.5 lakh.
2024 proved no different and even as occasional reports of improved service on some flights came in, in fits and starts, as did some more anecdotes of lapses, such as when a flier found a metal blade in his on board meal. 2025 began with an embarrassing episode with an aircraft headed to Delhi having to return to Chicago airport after most of the 12 toilets on the aircraft were found clogged and unusable. In April that year, passengers headed from the Capital to Bangalore on an Air India flight were stuck on the tarmac for 10 hours due to non-availability of crew.
Post the crash, chaos continues
The airline’s safety record, too, left a lot to be desired. Between January and July 2025, the airline received nine notices from the regulator, for five different violations, according to a disclosure in July by the aviation ministry in the Rajya Sabha.
The disclosure came in the wake of heightened scrutiny of the airline’s safety record following the Ahmedabad aircrash of AI 171 that killed 260 people, including 18 on the ground.
The nine included a show cause notice to the Director of Training in connection with violations committed by 19 crew members, flagging lapses found in training norms and protocols; a notice to the Cabin Safety Training Manager for breach of regulatory requirements in case of flight operations – the crew operated flights with a lapsed competency card on numerous occasions; and, soon after the crash, one to the Director of Cabin Safety in connection with four instances of non-compliance of cabin crew requirements for ultra long-haul range flights, although the violations happened in the year preceding the accident.
Then, at the end of July, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation’s annual audit said that inspections over the previous year had found a total of 19 Level One findings with Tata group airlines, the only ones with Level One findings among the Indian carriers audited. DGCA classifies audit findings into two levels: Level 1 involves direct safety hazards, including improper aircraft maintenance, documentation of expired parts, or serious crew training deficiencies. Level 2 typically refers to procedural violations or administrative oversights.
In late December 2025, DGCA issued a notice to Air India pilots and the airline for operating and dispatching aircraft with repeated snags, minimum equipment list (MEL) non-compliance, and crew decision-making concerns. The flights involved were on the Delhi-Tokyo sector and the regulator reportedly found system degradations and smoke smell near a cabin door, yet aircraft were accepted for flight.
To be sure, some of the show cause notices are technical, but together, the pattern of notices highlights serious deficiencies in crew management and scheduling and rest rules, operational planning, failure to observe guidelines for crew requirements, and lapses in training procedures. Executives in the airline said that the weakest link in the Air India chain remains engineering and the poor maintenance of aircraft – both within the cabin and under the hood. With technical and maintenance glitches often in the spotlight, many within and outside are now asking why the Tata group did not insist and offer the government a good price for AIESL, the engineering wing of the company which has remained under government control and ownership.
Worse, as March, the end of the financial year, approaches, Air India is likely to hit a new low, posting its biggest ever loss since the airline changed hands . News reports say that the group loss is likely to be in the range of ₹15,000 crore with Air India’s losses rising and Air India Express (AIX) reducing its losses over the financial year. Airline executives said that AIX is likely to post a loss of around ₹3,500 crore while Air India’s loss is likely to account for the rest.
In May 2025, things were looking a bit rosier and the airline seemed to slowly but surely be inching towards a financial turnaround. Air India had managed to bring down its pre-tax loss to ₹3,890 for the financial year ended March 2025, no mean achievement for an airline that had seen significant losses for the last several years. This had been made possible by a mix of increased utilisation of aircraft, better load factors and decent yields on many international sectors where competition was low or negligible.
The group loss, however, had remained quite high at over ₹10,000 crore as Air India Express -- which used to post minor profits before the merger -- posted a substantial loss post the merger with Air Asia India. .
Unfortunately for the Tata group, a combination of events which began in last April thanks to the escalating tensions between India and Pakistan, which led to a closure of Pakistan air space and forced the airline to divert and reroute aircraft bound for North America, added to the costs. This was followed by the deadly AI171 crash in June 2025 which itself was a huge financial hit (hull loss and a host of accident related costs); the accident also scared fliers, leading to a substantial fall in loads and revenues for the carrier. Even within the airline, morale and confidence hit a new low, severely impacting crew productivity following the catastrophe.
But if revenues took a dip, costs failed to follow suit. Too much of the focus of the team in charge appears to be on cosmetic changes : gimmicky videos, new uniforms and look, better food and so on, with too little attention on the actual operations: rostering of pilots, improving ground operations and focussing on improving training standards and procedures. To be sure, some of the costs, those related to the accident and the closure of air space, were beyond the airline’s control.
As heads roll, where do we go from here
Even as the news of imminent departure -- predicated by many even before the crash -- of CEO Campbell Wilson before his term officially ends sunk in , many questions remain unanswered.
The most pressing one concerns head of safety Henry Donohoe, brought in by Campbell, expressly to bridge the gap he found in the airline. Soon after Campbell took charge, he told this writer in an interview in June 2023, that he had worked in different cultures and had the requisite experience. He added that, “My moves so far have been to recruit Indians for most roles. The only exception so far on a permanent staff basis is hiring of a chief of safety and security where I felt that bringing in international best practices from a global airline was required”.
But post the crash, there’s a spotlight on the ability and competence of the head of safety brought in by Campbell who also happened to be director of safety in August 2016 at Emirates when the airline had its first hull loss. Although the cause of the Emirates accident was identified as pilot error, many argue that this -- along with the AI171 crash -- makes Donohoe the only head of safety with two hull losses and crashes under his watch globally.
“Since Campbell has time and again absolved Air India from any culpability in the AI171 crash, there is no reason why the head of safety should have to go. Yet if he stays, Air India’s head of safety will have the dubious distinction of having seen two wide body crashes under his watch during his career. It’s probably a first”, said an employee, asking not to be named. An email sent to the airline regarding the head of safety remained unanswered till the time of going to press.
With many similar vexing questions, industry analysts say that four years after its ownership changed hands, Air India appears to be at the crossroads again, and will need some heavy lifting -- an unenviable task for the incoming CEO and team members.
(Anjuli Bhargava writes about governance, infrastructure, and the social sector. The views expressed are personal.)
