It’s been less than a year since Air India Flight 171 crashed, killing everyone on board except for a single survivor. And while commercial airline crashes remain incredibly rare, reports that Air India had also faked safety and medical records probably didn’t do much to build trust in the airline. Now, Reuters reports India’s civil aviation ministry has told lawmakers that more than 80% of the Air India aircraft it’s inspected since January of last year had “recurring technical defects.” So that’s not great.
Really, this entire Reuters report reads like Air India’s operations are a slow-rolling disaster. I mean, the literal opening line is, “Technical incidents such as engine oil and fuel leaks affecting Air India flights reached their highest rate in at least 14 months in January, a company document shows, underscoring growing strain on the carrier’s revamp ambitions.” That isn’t really how you start an article when things are going well at a company, but then again, companies don’t normally go on the record saying they have a “need for urgent improvements in process discipline, communication, and compliance culture.”
Issues at Air India have also gotten a lot worse over the last couple of years, with January’s reported technical incident rate of 1.09 per 1,000 flights more than four times higher than it was in December 2024, when the airline saw a technical incident rate of 0.26. It’s also doing a much worse job of maintaining its planes than its competition. Of the 166 Air India aircraft inspected by the civil aviation ministry, 82.5% were found to have recurring technical defects, compared to IndiGo’s 36.5%.
Air India’s troubles
It’s also not like the issues reported in the company document that Reuters reviewed were minor, as the incidents “included engine stall warnings, issues related to flight control and hydraulics, and engine oil and fuel leaks.” The airline also reported “five instances of fuel or engine oil leaks in the month” and one flight between Delhi and Dubai was found to be low on oil only after it landed. Meanwhile, a January 12 flight was forced to turn back after the crew discovered there was “no water in lavatory and galley.”
The airline is also experiencing more rejected takeoffs, altitude restrictions while flying, and incorrect settings used during takeoff, an issue that also appears to be getting worse, as its incident rate of 0.29 per 1,000 flights in January was more than double the rate reported in December 2024.
Don’t worry, though, Air India wants you to know it knows there’s a problem and is working to “drive down” the rate of technical incidents. According to the company, “[s]ystemic improvements [are] being introduced across flight ops, training, engineering quality, and procedural oversight to prevent recurrence.” It’s also allegedly increased its inventory of critical spare parts by more than 30% to cut down on the number of inoperable planes in its fleet and is delighted to report there’s been a “decrease in operational incidents” in recent months.
That said, the airline has reportedly been dealing with some supply chain issues that definitely aren’t helping it fix its problems, with CEO Campbell Wilson regularly complaining that disruptions keep delaying planned retrofits. Pakistan recently closing its airspace to Indian airlines certainly hasn’t made operations easier, either. But as long as Air India survives long enough to turn things around, it does have orders placed for more than 500 new planes, and once those hit the fleet, those should be a lot safer since they probably won’t be broken. Yet.
