India's aviation boom is straining workers, systems and service quality

The recent alleged assault of a passenger by an off-duty Air India Express pilot at Delhi airport should not be dismissed as an isolated lapse of individual conduct. It is better read as a stress signal in an aviation system under growing operational and human strain. Between 2021 and October last year, there were over 36,500 passenger complaints. And while incidents involving staff behaviour form only a small proportion, they tend to surface at moments of disruption, delays, cancellations, and missed connections. India’s aviation sector is flying more people than ever before, but the experience on the ground tells a more troubled story. The recent data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation points to a steady rise in passenger complaints relative to traffic, even during months when passenger volumes soften. For instance, in October 2025, the passenger complaint rate was 1.1 per 10,000, as against 0.68 in May. This suggests that dissatisfaction is no longer merely a function of crowding or peak demand. Instead, it reflects how disruption is managed once it occurs. Complaints related to flight disruption, refunds, and baggage consistently account for the bulk of the grievances. Seasonal stress exposes the system’s weaknesses most clearly. During monsoon and winter months, weather-related cancellations rise sharply, but it is “reactionary” delays, or knock-on effects from earlier disruption, that dominate.

 

Complaints formally categorised as “staff behaviour” remain a small share of the total, but often spike during disruption-heavy periods. The frontline staff, including pilots, the cabin crew, and ground personnel, operates under intense time pressure, heightened scrutiny, and limited discretion, often acting as the last interface between systemic failure and passenger anger. This tension has grown even as airline employment expanded in recent years across most categories. Headcount growth, however, does not automatically translate into slack. A high passenger-load factor, tight schedules, and productivity demands mean that more people are being moved through a system, which leaves little room for recovery when things go wrong. Recent regulatory changes also underline this trade-off. The new rules on Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) mandate more liberal duty rosters and rest periods for pilots and the cabin crew. Designed to improve safety and reduce fatigue, the rules are necessary and overdue. But their rollout has already exposed how finely balanced airline operations have become, contributing to flight cancellations as carriers adjust schedules and crew availability. This is a reminder that safety, reliability, and capacity cannot all be maximised simultaneously without investment and planning.

 

Further, airlines are required to provide facilities and compensation to passengers in the case of cancellations, delays, and denied boarding, which entails considerable cost. For instance, in October alone, all domestic airlines combined spent ₹2.51 crore on facilitation/compensation. Yet near-perfect grievance-closure rates tell only part of the story. Closing a complaint is not the same as fixing its causes. Compensation soothes immediate anger, but it does little to address systemic weaknesses. As India’s aviation market continues to scale up, airlines must also focus on managing experience. That means treating service quality, labour conditions, and operational resilience as core infrastructure.