India's Aviation Law Revolution: Legislative Reform, Judicial Developments, and Regulatory Transformation, 2024–2026

Abstract

Few sectors of the Indian economy have witnessed as dramatic a legislative awakening as civil aviation did between 2024 and 2026. Driven largely by the catastrophic lessons of the Go First airline insolvency, India's lawmakers moved with uncommon urgency to address structural vulnerabilities that had long undermined investor confidence and inflated leasing costs. This paper traces three interlocking threads of transformation: the enactment of the Protection of Interests in Aircraft Objects Act, 2025, which finally gave meaningful domestic teeth to India's decade-old ratification of the Cape Town Convention; the introduction of the Bharatiya Vayuyan Adhiniyam, 2024, which retired a colonial-era regulatory statute and reoriented civil aviation governance for the contemporary era; and the promulgation of India's first mandatory sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) blending requirement, which introduced a new dimension of environmental compliance into airline operations. Woven alongside these legislative milestones are significant judicial pronouncements — notably the Bombay High Court's resolution of a 27-year aviation dispute in Airport Authority of India v. Aer Lingus Ltd — and the unfolding passenger rights crisis triggered by IndiGo's mass flight cancellations in December 2025. Taken together, these developments reveal a nation consciously redesigning its aviation legal architecture, not merely as an administrative exercise, but as a strategic instrument of economic ambition. The paper argues that while India has made genuinely historic progress, certain fault lines — particularly the constitutional vulnerability of unilateral arbitrator appointment and the unresolved legacy of pre-2025 insolvency disputes — warrant continued scholarly and regulatory attention.