India must establish an independent aviation safety board and carry out a fundamental overhaul of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to meet the growing demands of the country's air travel sector, Federation of Indian Pilots founding president and former Air India pilot Minoo Wadia said on Sunday, 9 August. Wadia, speaking in an interview, argued that structural deficiencies at the aviation regulator have long been flagged but remain unaddressed.

A Decades-Old Concern

According to Wadia, concerns about the DGCA's structure and functioning are not new — they have been raised repeatedly with successive governments over several decades. The Federation of Indian Pilots has written to the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Civil Aviation on multiple occasions seeking substantive reforms.

'We have written to the Prime Minister, to the Ministry, that there are two essential things which are required for safety on air. One is an independent safety board, and secondly, is total revamping of the office of the DGCA,' Wadia said.

The Core Problem: Bureaucrats Running a Technical Regulator

Wadia traced the origin of the Federation of Indian Pilots to a fundamental gap he observed when he transitioned from the Indian Air Force to Air India — the near-total absence of aviation professionals within the DGCA.

'Earlier in those days, when I came from the Air Force and joined Air India, there was not a single aviator in the whole office of the DGCA. The DGCA was only full of bureaucrats. So my question is, why are we blaming them? How do you expect them to understand about aviation if they're all bureaucrats?' Wadia said.

He argued that aviation is a highly technical field requiring regulators with deep domain knowledge and hands-on operational expertise — qualities that a purely administrative cadre cannot provide. While acknowledging that some incremental changes have occurred over the years, Wadia said the overall structure and institutional attitude of the DGCA have not evolved sufficiently to keep pace with India's rapidly expanding aviation sector.

Turbulence Context: What the Phuket-Delhi Incident Reveals

Wadia also addressed the turbulence reported during a Phuket-Delhi flight, placing it in a broader technical context. He said turbulence is a routine occurrence in aviation worldwide and can originate from a range of weather conditions.

Severe turbulence is commonly associated with cumulonimbus cloud formations, while clear-air turbulence can strike even in the absence of visible clouds. 'Anywhere you fly in the world, turbulence is a very common phenomenon. There are different types of turbulence. Most of the time, it's from the clouds, which are vertical, which I call nimbostratus clouds or cumulonimbus clouds,' he stated.

Notably, this comes at a time when India's civil aviation sector is among the fastest-growing in the world, making robust regulatory oversight more critical than ever. The demand for a dedicated, independent safety investigation body — separate from the DGCA — mirrors models adopted in the United States (NTSB) and several European nations.

What Needs to Change

Wadia's call centres on two pillars: first, creating a statutorily independent aviation safety board insulated from the Ministry of Civil Aviation; and second, restructuring the DGCA to induct qualified aviation professionals into senior regulatory roles. Without these changes, critics argue, India's aviation oversight will continue to lag behind international safety benchmarks even as passenger numbers surge.

Whether the government will act on these long-standing recommendations remains to be seen, but the renewed spotlight on aviation safety — triggered in part by recent turbulence incidents — has lent fresh urgency to the debate.