https://www.theweek.in/news/biz-tech/2026/04/21/indian-airline-turbulence-aviation-industry-challenges.html
What should have been a season of bounty is turning into a period of uncertainty, churn and discontent in India’s airline space. With planes going full and passengers forking out above-average fares to travel domestically for either their summer vacations back home, to pilgrimage spots, or to tourism hubs, it really shouldn’t have been the case.
Yet, the truth is that India’s aviation majors are in an unhappy state of mind. And to blame it all on the obvious—the conflict in the Middle East—leading to a spike in fuel costs, is to miss all the turbulence hiding in plain sight.
First and foremost, there is the internal strife going on in both IndiGo and Air India, which, between them, control about 91 per cent of India’s domestic passenger air travel.
Both airlines saw their CEOs ousted internally, as multiple pressures reached a boiling point. Indigo CEO Pieter Elbers, whose days were numbered after the airline’s meltdown back in winter saw hundreds of flights cancelled and impacting anywhere upto 4 lakh passengers, bowed out, with founder Rahul Bhatia quickly replacing him with Willie Walsh, the former chief of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and a veteran of airline companies such as British Airways and Aer Lingus (Ireland).
At Air India, things are murkier. CEO Campbell Wilson put in his papers on April 7, though he continues to run the airline until the Tatas find a replacement. To make matters worse, questions have been raised in Tata Sons boardrooms about thousands of crores of rupees being invested in the airline, in what is turning out to be a bottomless pit—with no sign of any distinct resurgence or revamp (unless you are happy with Manish Malhotra uniforms and a new logo).
Worse, the repeated pampering of the ‘white elephant’ even became a question hanging over the reinstatement of N.Chandrasekharan as Tata Sons chairman in the board meeting, the hint being as to why, even into its fourth year of a five-year transformation plan, the airline seems to be ambling along without any marked difference.
The irony couldn’t be more stark. The situation, at least on paper, is ripe for Air India to knock it out of the park, considering how the Iran war has weakened the Middle East biggies. For the last two decades or so, Dubai’s Emirates (and to a smaller extent, Qatar and Abu Dhabi’s Etihad) had lorded it over international air traffic globally, much of that success riding on its hub-and-spoke model of bringing in international passengers from dense markets like India, China and Australia for onward travel into Europe and the US. And back.
21/04/2026 K Sunil Thomas/The Week
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