Civil Aviation Environment in India

The Indian civil aviation sector that showed impressive profits in the pre-liberalisation era has been adversely affected since the onset of the government's open-sky policy in the late 1980s. Attempts to modernise and streamline the airlines' functioning remain stymied due to technological obsolescence, successive changes in government in the mid-1990s; lack of a coherent policy on private participation as well as recalcitrance on the part of politically affiliated unions of pilots and controllers. However, as borne out by several expert recommendations, a reverse in the fortunes of India's beleaguered airlines can only occur with the dawn of professional management.

Aglimpse of the environment in which Civil Aviation in India is operating today can be had from a news item, which appeared in the May 20, 2000 edition of local newspapers [2] As per the newspaper report, the May 12 Alliance Air (a subsidiary of Indian Airlines, the national flag carrier) flight to Lucknow was re-routed via Patna for complying with the needs of 30 MPs from Bihar (an Indian state). The civil aviation minister himself took the decision for diversion. Later chief justice, Delhi High Court took a serious view of Indian Airlines giving special treatment to politicians and narrated an incident in which on May 8, he was asked to vacate his seat in the front row on an Indian Airlines flight and make place for an MP.

In this article, an attempt has been made to analyse the operating environment for aviation industry in India based on the activities reported in different organisations The article is based on the happenings over last five years only because the dynamism inherent in the environment makes the older references irrelevant for the current environmental analysis.