Nearly nine out of ten air travel grievances in India are aimed at airlines, with over 97,000 complaints filed against them on the government’s AirSewa portal since its launch in 2016, as per official data.
The figures, tabled in the Lok Sabha on August 7, state that airlines accounted for 8,262 complaints out of a total of 1,09,834, which were lodged between November 25, 2016 and July 31, 2025. 10 of these were pending, as per the data.
In a written reply to MP Brijmohan Agarwal, the minister of state (MoS) for civil aviation Murlidhar Mohol said that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DCGA) received the third-highest number of passenger complaints (with a total of 1,831), out of which 11 cases were still open.
Other agencies, including the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), customs, immigration and security units, reported far fewer grievances, said the minister.
Complaint volumes spiked during the pandemic in 2020, with a total of 19,573 lodged, and surged again in 2024 to 19,262, the second-highest figure in the portal’s history, the data revealed.
The AirSewa portal was rolled out alongside a corresponding mobile app by former civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapati Raju in November 2016. It was intended as a one-stop platform to seek time-bound resolution of passenger issues, offering complainants to upload voice or video supplements alongside their complaints.
The portal’s registered users increased from 346 in its first year to over 1.67 lakh by 2025, as per government data.
An updated version of the portal, titled AirSewa 2.0, was launched in 2018.
But the portal has also drawn criticism, in response to which the ministry acknowledged receiving complaints about technical glitches and usability from sign-up failures and repeated verification loops to unresponsive servers.
“Issues regarding user signup, multiple verification and unresponsive server with regard to AirSewa Portal have come to the cognizance of the Ministry through various channels such as Social media, Emails, Telephone Calls etc. AirSewa has a dedicated Control Room housed in the Ministry of Civil Aviation to address the Air Passenger Grievances including complaints regarding usability and technical issues of AirSewa portal. The Ministry has resolved such issues as and when received in coordination with the Control Room and Technical back-end Team,” read the ministry’s response.
It also confirmed there are no current plans to integrate the system with online travel agents or aggregators, keeping the process centralised through the portal.