Between January 2024 and December 2025, India's aviation safety regulator (DGCA) formally issued about 352 show-cause notices to domestic carriers, according to Union Minister for Civil Aviation, Murlidhar Mohol in a written response to Member of Parliament, Saket Gokhale of the Trinamool Congress (TMC).
Of all airlines, IndiGo received the highest number of show-cause notices, 98, and has the largest share of the market at 440 total aircraft. In second place is Air India, which received 84 notices and has total fleet size of 187 aircraft.
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The notices included violations in operational flight safety, operational and customer service operations, flight maintenance, crew training and customer rights.
Major airline operators in India
IndiGo, Air India, Air India Express, Akasa Air and SpiceJet are the five major scheduled airline operators in India.
As far as total number of show-cause notice issued are concerned, InterGlobe Aviation Limited (the company that owns and operates IndiGo) was issued 98 notices (approximately 28 per cent of total), Air India was issued 84 notices, and Air India Express issued 65 notices. In comparison, SpiceJet was issued 45 notices and Alliance Air was issued 23 notices.
Akasa Air has received 17 show-cause notices and FlyBig has received 12 show-cause notices.
As of now, Air India Express has 110 aircraft, SpiceJet has 35 and Akasa Air has 33 aircraft.
Penalties and withdrawals ordered
There were penalties for 139 of the 352 cases and warnings for 113.
According to Mohol, 33 cases resulted in personnel or operational suspensions, and 15 resulted in approvals being withdrawn.
The DGCA stated that out of the 352 cases analysed, it found the airline's reply satisfactory in seven cases, which was sufficient for the related case not to be placed for action. In addition, the minister reported that 11 replies are still pending and that 29 cases are still in progress.
Mohol mentioned that enforcement monitoring has been digitalised using the e-Governance of Civil Aviation portal (eGCA).
When asked if the government would consider a quarterly enforcement dashboard that shows all enforcement related information (excluding private information), Mohol responded that The DGCA electronically monitors its surveillance activities in real-time using the MIS system accessible through the eGCA portal.
