Author: JK SHARMA
JK SHARMA
Wing Commander JK Sharma is a former fast-jet fighter pilot in the Indian Air Force, where he served as head of training and development and director of implementation for new aircraft programmes. He now advises on aviation safety, MRO and ground support equipment
India’s civil aviation sector has grown at a pace few regulators anywhere in the world have had to manage. Passenger traffic has multiplied, fleets have expanded, and new airports have opened across smaller cities almost every quarter. Growth of this scale tests the underlying safety architecture in ways that annual statistics alone cannot capture. The events of the past two years, most notably the Air India Boeing 787 accident in Ahmedabad in June 2025 that claimed 260 lives, have forced a hard national reckoning with what “safety culture” actually means in practice, and whether India’s systems are evolving quickly enough…
