Most of the airlines in India — including Air India Express, GoAir, IndiGo, Jet Airways, Kingfisher and SpiceJet — were named in the report, which was dated Dec. 27.
The report was given to The New York Times on Monday by an airline executive, who asked to remain anonymous because the report was not public and he feared repercussions.
The report noted that the regulatory agency, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, had been prompted to examine the airlines amid a “background of severe financial stress being faced by almost all” of the carriers.
It was signed by Lalit Gupta, head of the aircraft engineering branch of the directorate, and E. K. Bharat Bhushan, the regulatory agency’s top official. Neither official returned a call for comment on Monday.
The report found fault with almost every one of India’s airlines, although the regulator said it had yet to examine Air India’s international operations.
The concerns included a shortage of pilots at Air India Express, the state carrier’s budget airline; a shortage of engines and a spate of pilot departures at Kingfisher Airlines; a two-year delay in auditing international operations at Jet Airways; a lack of instructors for the Boeing 737 aircraft at SpiceJet; and incomplete investigations of incidents at IndiGo.
The Indian airline industry is nearing a crisis after rapid growth, analysts say. In the last seven years, according to the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation, passenger numbers have tripled, to more than 150 million last year. About $14 billion has been invested in aircraft and more than $25 billion in the whole industry in that time, but the growth in pilots, flight trainers, regulatory safety experts and maintenance engineers has not kept pace with demand, according to analysts and regulators themselves.
Stiff competition in the industry has recently driven down revenue to the point where several airlines are nearing bankruptcy, raising more safety concerns.
“The airline sector is broadly at a brink of financial disaster,” said Kapil Kaul, the South Asia chief executive at the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation. “Most of them don’t have a business case to exist, and fund-raising options have dried up.”
The Indian airline industry has lost $5 billion to $6 billion in the last five years and this year was expected to lose an additional $2 billion, he said.
While in other parts of the world, some airlines may have consolidated or shut, in India they remained in business in part because they are financed by entrepreneurs who have a personal stake in trying to make the business work, Mr. Kaul said.
“The airlines which are surviving are beyond business,” he said.
The report did not discuss direct dangers to passengers. Mr. Kaul said that if the regulator had thought passengers were at risk, it would have grounded airlines.
IndiGo, one of the few Indian airlines that is not losing money, disputed the regulator’s report, saying, among other things, that the airline had removed engines early to comply with a directive from the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States about one engine model, and that all employees were “strongly encouraged” to report any safety issues.
A spokeswoman for GoAir said that the airline had met with the regulator on Jan. 6 about the report and that the regulator had “fully accepted” GoAir’s response. “GoAir has always been committed to guarantee high safety standards and will continue to invest all the resources necessary to keep our standards at the highest level,” she said.
Jet Airways said, “All points raised by the report have been clarified and accepted by the safety department of D.G.C.A. Guest safety is of paramount importance at Jet Airways and JetLite,” a Jet subsidiary.
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