Air India’s Systemic Collapse: How Safety Failures Are Crashing Aviation Stocks
- By DJ Kamal Mustafa -
- Feb 04, 2026
The violent selloff that gripped the Indian stock exchanges this Tuesday morning is the only honest verdict left for a catastrophic aviation industry. Investors fled aviation stocks and wiped out billions of rupees in market capitalization within hours because they finally see the truth that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation refuses to admit. The grounding of an Air India Boeing 787 in London due to a fuel control switch malfunction is not a proactive safety measure. It is a damning indictment of an airline that has learned absolutely nothing from its own blood soaked history. We are watching a once proud national carrier devolve into a ticking time bomb that threatens the life of every passenger who steps on board and the solvency of every investor who foolishly trusted the Tata turnaround story.
To pretend this week is an anomaly is to lie to the public. We must face the analytical reality of an airline that does not suffer from accidents but rather from a recurring and systemic disease of incompetence. The evidentiary record is a graveyard that stretches back nearly fifty years and the bodies are piled high to prove it.
The history of Air India is written in obituaries. In January 1978 Flight 855 crashed into the Arabian Sea and killed 213 people because the pilot could not overcome instrument failure and spatial disorientation. The machine failed and the human factor collapsed. In May 2010 the nation wept as Air India Express Flight 812 overshot the runway in Mangalore and killed 158 people. That investigation proved the captain was asleep for much of the flight and suffered from severe sleep inertia while a terrified junior pilot failed to intervene. In August 2020 the airline ignored repeated expert warnings about the table top runway in Kozhikode until Flight 1344 crashed and killed 21 people in the rain.
Yet the industry did not change. The most unforgivable entry in this dark ledger remains fresh in our collective memory. It was only on June 12 of 2025 that Air India Flight 171 crashed in Ahmedabad and claimed 260 lives. The investigation laid the blame on the fuel control switch which cut supply to the engines during the most critical phase of flight. We were promised rigorous audits. We were promised a new era of safety. We were lied to.
It is now February 3 of 2026 and we are staring at the exact same failure on a London to Bengaluru flight. The same specific component has failed again only eight months after it killed 260 people. This proves that the inspections were a fraud and the maintenance protocols are nonexistent. This level of negligence is criminal. It suggests that the airline is willing to gamble with hundreds of lives rather than spend the money and time required to sanitize its fleet of defective parts.
The financial markets have reacted with rage because the smart money knows what comes next. Aviation shares are in freefall because international regulators like the FAA and EASA will not look away this time. India risks a safety rating downgrade that would shatter the economy. A downgrade means Indian carriers cannot expand into the West and existing codeshare agreements vanish. The ambitious orders for hundreds of new jets are now toxic assets that will drag the balance sheets of these companies underwater.
We must also tear down the mythology surrounding the new ownership. The return of Air India to the Tata Group was hailed as a savior moment but the reality has been a logistical nightmare. The management is attempting to bolt modern engines onto a crumbling airframe of legacy rot. They are expanding routes while their engineering bases are collapsing under the pressure. You cannot solve a culture of apathy by buying glossy advertisements or new Airbus jets. The critical infrastructure of technicians and hangars is totally insufficient for the fleet size they possess.
The regulator is equally culpable. The DGCA has become a silent spectator to this carnage. They issue papers after the fire is out but do nothing to prevent the spark. They have allowed commercial expansion to outpace safety capabilities.
The traveling public must stop being polite about this crisis. Air India has demonstrated a total inability to keep its planes in the sky. The fuel control switch failure this week is the final warning. The death toll speaks for itself. 213 dead. 158 dead. 21 dead. 260 dead. These are not statistics. These were people betrayed by a system that values profit and schedules over survival. The stock market has crashed because it sees no future for this industry. Passengers should check the historical record before they book a ticket. The luck has run out.