<div id="readability-page-1"><div id="parent_top_div">The Centre on Tuesday appointed Vir Vikram Yadav as the new Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), replacing Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, who has been moved as additional secretary in the Department of Personnel and Training, marking the end of a turbulent tenure at India’s aviation regulator. Kidwai’s tenure since January 2025 unfolded through a sequence of high-impact aviation crises, regulatory confrontations, and institutional scrutiny, with events from mid-2025 to early 2026 exposing deeper systemic concerns in India’s aviation safety architecture. The first major shock came with the Air India Flight 171 crash on June 12, 2025, when a Boeing 787-8 operating from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick crashed shortly after take-off, killing around 260 people. The incident triggered a multi-agency probe and a detailed safety audit of Air India by the DGCA in July 2025, which flagged nearly 100 safety lapses, including serious violations related to pilot training, cabin crew deployment, and breaches of flight duty time limitations (FDTL). Through the rest of 2025, the DGCA was simultaneously engaged in a prolonged and contentious overhaul of FDTL norms. The move to tighten pilot duty and rest rules in the interest of safety met strong resistance from airlines, while pilot bodies pushed for stricter enforcement, turning the issue into a sector-wide stand-off. The repeated delays and consultations highlighted the difficulty of enforcing safety reforms without disrupting airline operations. The tensions around FDTL and pilots’ availability culminated in the IndiGo scheduling crisis beginning December 1, 2025, shortly after the revised norms were fully implemented in November 2025. IndiGo, which had not ramped up pilot hiring in line with the stricter FDTL requirements, faced acute crew shortages, leading to the cancellation of nearly 4,500 flights over about 10 days. The DGCA stepped in with temporary FDTL relaxations, fare caps, and close monitoring to stabilise operations amid one of the largest-ever operational disruptions in Indian aviation. The pressure extended into 2026 with the Baramati Learjet 45 crash on January 28 this year, a high-profile tragedy that killed Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar along with four others when a chartered Learjet 45 crashed during a landing attempt at Baramati. The aircraft, flying from Mumbai, went down just short of the runway amid poor visibility, with no survivors. The political significance of the crash, involving one of the state’s most powerful leaders, brought unprecedented attention to safety gaps in non-scheduled aviation operations, especially at smaller airfields with limited infrastructure. This was followed by an air ambulance crash in Chatra, Jharkhand, on February 23, further underscoring risks in emergency and charter aviation, and prompting the DGCA to tighten oversight of non-scheduled operators, including grounding aircraft and flagging operational and airworthiness concerns. Against this backdrop, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report tabled on March 25 brought together these incidents to argue that India’s aviation safety challenges are systemic rather than episodic. The panel cited the June 2025 Ahmedabad crash, the January 2026 Baramati crash, the February 2026 Chatra air ambulance crash, and the December 2025 mass cancellations as evidence of “systemic fragilities”, and recommended the creation of an independent high-level committee to conduct a root-cause analysis within 90 days. The report also raised structural concerns within the regulator, noting that the DGCA was operating with 843 personnel against a sanctioned strength of 1,630, implying a vacancy rate of 48.3 per cent. It further pointed to a DGCA audit of 754 commercial aircraft between January 2025 and February 2026, which found recurring technical defects in 377 aircraft, including a significant number within Air India and Air India Express fleets.</div></div>

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The Centre appointed Vir Vikram Yadav as the new Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), replacing Faiz Ahmed Kidwai. Kidwai's tenure was marked by significant aviation crises, including the Air India Flight 171 crash in June 2025, which raised serious safety concerns. The DGCA faced challenges in enforcing new flight duty time regulations, leading to operational disruptions, including a major scheduling crisis at IndiGo. A Parliamentary report highlighted systemic issues in India's aviation safety, recommending an independent committee to analyze the root causes of these challenges.

DGCA gets new chief as Vir Vikram Yadav replaces Faiz Ahmed Kidwai