The wreckage of Air India Flight 182 still smoulders on the tarmac, and already the vultures are circling. Not the carrion birds of the subcontinent, but the smooth-talking inspectors from the Civil Aviation Authority, rubbing their hands at the prospect of a trans-Atlantic blame game. As the probe deepens, news outlets are dusting off their favourite narrative: that safety standards in the developing world are somehow second-rate.
But let us be honest. The real scandal is not the state of Indian aviation. It is the creeping rot in our own.
We Britons, smug in our belief that our carriers are models of rigour, should look closer. The same cost-cutting mania that gutted British manufacturing now permeates the skies. Maintenance contracts awarded to the lowest bidder.
Experienced engineers replaced with agency staff. A culture of box-ticking rather than genuine vigilance. The Air India crash is a mirror, and it reflects an uncomfortable truth: our own safety margins are as thin as the oxygen at 30,000 feet.
The final report will likely cite pilot error or mechanical failure. But the deeper failure is a moral one. A civilisation that prioritises quarterly profits over human life is not merely decadent.
It is doomed. The Roman Empire fell not because of barbarians at the gates, but because it forgot how to care. We are forgetting too.
