Senior bureaucrat Vir Vikram Yadav appointed new DGCA chief

NEW DELHI: Senior bureaucrat Vir Vikram Yadav has been appointed Director General of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), replacing Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, according to an authoritative bid issued connected Tuesday, cited by PTI. Yadav, a 1996-batch IAS serviceman of the Odisha cadre, is presently serving arsenic further caput successful the ministry of environment, wood and clime change. Kidwai, who headed the aviation information regulator for a small implicit a year, has been appointed further caput successful the section of unit and training. The enactment alteration comes astatine a clip erstwhile the DGCA is dealing with aggregate challenges, including information concerns, operational disruptions and the interaction of ongoing tensions successful West Asia connected hose operations. During Kidwai’s tenure, the regulator faced scrutiny pursuing wide disruptions astatine IndiGo successful December 2025, lapses astatine assorted airlines, accidents involving non-scheduled operators, and a fatal clang involving an Air India craft successful June past year. The DGCA had taken enforcement actions, including penalties against IndiGo. Airline operations are besides nether unit owed to airspace restrictions linked to the Middle East conflict, starring to longer routes and higher substance costs.

At the aforesaid time, India’s aviation assemblage continues to spot beardown maturation successful rider demand, adjacent arsenic airlines grapple with craft shortages. Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu precocious said deliveries of astir 1,700 ordered craft could instrumentality up to 15 years owed to planetary proviso concatenation issues. The DGCA has besides introduced respective passenger-friendly measures, including caller norms connected spot allocation and summons cancellations, though airlines person raised concerns implicit imaginable gross impact.