Daybreak - Everyone who's anyone is flying private in India. They're not really flying safe

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

In late January, a plane crash in Maharashtra killed the state's deputy chief minister, Ajit Pawar. It also exposed something few had been paying attention to: India's booming private charter industry, where demand is surging, corners are being cut, and the regulator is struggling to keep pace. There are now over 430 non-scheduled aircraft in the country. The top operator alone has 17 planes and 70-plus pilots. But between periodic audits, years-long crash investigations, and operators who'd rather fly with a broken light than lose a booking — the cycle of crash, probe, and forget has a way of repeating itself.Tune in.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording.

Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get an alert as soon as we release our first episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. In late January, a plane crash in Indira Maharashtra killed the state's deputy chief minister, Ajit Pawar. The incident triggered a political crisis.

And it also threw a situation. spotlight on a sector that had gone largely unnoticed until then. Private charter flights, which are run by aviation companies with a non-scheduled operator's permit or NSOP, are how powerful people move within the country. The entire sector is built around their urgent needs. Politicians use them to hop across districts in a single day. Industrialists rely on them to reach factories beyond commercial flight routes. Especially during election season, airports basically,

turn into parking lots for private helicopters. And that exact urgency has reshaped the sector in two major ways. First, the number of non-scheduled aircraft in India rose by a third between 2021 and 2025 to over 430, according to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation or DGCA. A manager at Carnavati Aviation, the aviation arm of the Adani Group, said that in the last year alone, operators added over 30 helicopters, which is the most in nearly 60 years. Second, the pressure to deliver on time never eases up. My colleague, the Ken reporter Noohabubere, spoke to a private jet pilot who experienced

this pressure firsthand last year. Once, he was scheduled to fly from Delhi to Jaipur at 6am. But five hours before departure, he was woken up by a rapid series of phone calls. The client wanted to leave an hour earlier. The pilot rushed, but still arrived 15 minutes late. In commercial aviation, that's kind of routine. But in private charter, that's unacceptable. The manager from Karnavati claimed that this sector functions in hours, not days or weeks.

Every hour on the ground is lost revenue for the operators. And that's where the system bends. Regulatory audits are periodic and investigations into crashes take years conclude. The DGCA was expected to complete its special audit on VASR Ventures, the operator of Pawar's plane by February 15th. But VASR, which is run by a father-sand-duro, Vijay Kumar Singh and Rohit Singh, was actually already under probe. A 2023 crash involving the same aircraft type that was carrying Pawar, a Lear jet 45, is still in its final stages of investigation nearly two and a half years later after the 2020.

accident. Now, India's charter flight sector isn't short of rules. But politics, commercial desperation and powerful promoters have tilted the balance and the Baramati crash has only made it more visible. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Richard Virgis and every day of the week, my co-host, Nikasharman and I will bring you one news story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Monday, the 2nd of March. The manager from Karnavati told Nuhan that there is a knee-jerk reaction every time an incident happens. But eventually it fades away. What happens is this.

First, not many clients will fly a VAS plane for, say, a few weeks. But then they always come back. Especially when there's no other aircraft available. And in India's private charter market, that is almost always the case. The manager claimed that Indians just have a very short memory span. Tragedies are usually forgotten within a few months. And he said that unless the regulator does something drastic, things almost always return to normal. Plus, non-scale-ude operators are in high demand.

A pilot who flies from VSR ventures pointed out that more businessmen are flying now. Also, more factories are being built in remote areas where commercial flights don't reach. So, private jets are practically a logistical need. Take Adani's cement facilities. It spread across Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chathascar and Karnataka, each located about 200 to 500 kilometres from the nearest airport. All C-suite executives of the group exclusively fly in Karnavati jets. Market research firm Traxin reported that for the year that ended in March 2025,

Karnavati posted revenues of over rupees 310 crore, which is a 40% increase from the year before. Election season amplifies this demand even further. During Bihar's last polls, 15 to 20 helicopters were lined up at Patna Airport in Bihar last year. The thing is, once you've acquired the taste of flying private jets, there's no turning back to commercial flights. Non-scalued aircraft in India have grown at a compounded annual rate of 15% over the past five years, outpacing the roughly 10% growth of domestic scheduled airlines. There are now over 80 operators.

and the top 15 control nearly two-thirds of the market. VSR ventures with 17 aircraft and over 70 pilots top the list. The company posted a profit of over rupees 12 crore in FY24 on revenues of about rupees 280 crore. In fact, by 2029, the entirety of India's private jet fleet is expected to grow to about 700 aircrafts. But the pressure of running that fleet is tremendous and it even trickles down to the pilots and the engineers.

The thing is, operating helicopters requires more approvals than fixed-wing charters and they don't always land at airports. And of course, compliance is always a constant hurdle. A former pilot with Delhi-based Pinnacle Air said that the short-term hindrances will always be there and they're all mentally prepared for it. Part of the pressure is also because clients are shelling out some real big bucks. Charter flights run from rupees 1.5 lakh an hour for a Learjet to rupees 11.5 to 14 lakh for a transcontinental aircraft like the Gull Stream G700. At those rates, expectations are also sky high.

The Carnavati manager put it quite succinctly. If somebody can afford to pay you rupees 10 lakh and R, they would extract that much value from you. See, the thing is, in commercial airlines, you're given what airlines have, not what you want. But with private jets on the other hand, the crew actually calls up the client the previous day to get their requirements. And of course, the cycle continues because clients trust these flight operators to fly them safely. But with each crash though, that trust might be in jeopardy. Stay tuned. The aircraft accident investigation bureau, or AAIB, has probed over 100 accidents between 2012 and 2025.

A significant portion of it involved flight training institutes and non-scheduled operators. Between 2014 and 2020, non-scheduled operators accounted for nearly 40% of all 56 aviation accidents. DGCA data shows that in the four years since, they've been involved in 11 more. After the Baramati crash, VSR's VK Singh told news channels that the aircraft was 100% safe that the crew was fairly experienced and just blamed all of it on poor visibility. He didn't respond to further questions. And his son, Rohit, declined to speak as well,

saying that the DGCA audit was going on. And not long after that crash, another private aircraft, this one was operated by a training academy, crashed in northern Karnataka and injured two people. One of the main causes for these crashes that keeps coming up is that operators are chasing profits and safety ends up coming second. Multiple sources that the Ken spoke to

noted that pilots are required to complete an annual flight simulator refresher course overseas which costs about rupees 15 to 25 lakh. An aviation analyst said that many operators simply don't send their crew for this test. Still, not everyone is cutting corners. Rohit Kapoor of the Jet Company and Aviation Consultancy said that there are a few bad eggs and it's just unfortunate that they're taking shortcuts. For some companies where Alcharic owners hold aircraft primarily for tax purposes,

profit isn't the only goal. But it doesn't help that regulators are also struggling to keep pace. The DGCA conducts periodic audits but can't station someone permanently with every operator. A lot ends up getting left to trust. An industry stakeholder even said that the DGCA is sometimes like the headmaster with a stick. because half the time operators are scared to even go up to them, and so there ends up being next to no collaboration. And for all the power that DGCA carries,

they can't really exert a lot of power and stop companies from operating altogether. So when things go wrong, penalties are issued, but the operations just continue. If there are minor snags, like say one of the front lights isn't working, these operators are actually more than likely to continue the journey rather than postpone the flight. Another pilot said that you'll have to replace whatever is needed after the next landing. This leeway actually only exists because the DGCA mentions in its handbook a minimum equipment list to enhance efficiency. So if these snacks don't endanger passenger safety, pilots, engineers and operators can just acknowledge it and then rectify it later. One pilot told Noha that a lot of promoters aren't qualified to make decisions about aircraft.

Usually, there isn't enough monetary backing for a proper setup with multiple levels of approval. So, when a chief pilot is stretched thin and has to handle everything from contracts to commercials and timesheets, the operations end up suffering. And because of this, there's another tension that stems. Non-sched operators are held to the same standards as scheduled airlines, even though they work in a completely different way. They have, like we discussed earlier, fewer pilots, smaller teams, and tighter margins. But the rules don't always reflect that.

Take the flight duty time limits. A private charter pilot can't fly more than 50 hours a month. A commercial airline pilot with far more backup is capped at 100. The Karnavati manager pointed out that these are two different classes of aircraft and two different classes of activities. And that's exactly why industry stakeholders feel that there's a certain degree of mistrust between non-scheduled flight operators and the DGU. And it's only going to get more complicated as the scrutiny increases because the regulator is

actually bracing for an entirely new class of aircraft, the electric vertical takeoff and landing or EOTL vehicles. While an IIT Madras incubated startup called the Eplane company has been developing prototypes, its well-funded drivers, Sarlah Aviation and LAT Aerospace are also charting their way into the Indian airspace. Meanwhile, accident reports take months or sometimes even years. By the time they land, the industry has just moved on. According to several private jet pilots that he can spoke to, the same is likely to happen with the VSR Ventures and Baramati crash probe as well. Finally, what ends up happening is this. In an industry which is built to outrun time,

regulatory enforcement arrives late. So, while accidents may briefly interrupt that site, they don't really change that reality. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription offers daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and a whole bunch of premium podcasts.

To subscribe, head to the Ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague Rachel Verghies, and edited by Rajiv Sien.