Japanese lessor AER, LLC has sent an IDERA
(Irrevocable Deregistration and Export Request Authorization) request to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the Indian regulator, to deregister all three aircraft currently registered with FlyBig, the regional airline.
At the end of the September quarter, the airline has three 19-seater DHC6 (Twin Otter) aircraft in its fleet. The IDERA notice covers all three, registered VT-HIT, VT-FBC and VT-BHK. The airline has a mere 58 weekly departures approved in the Northern Winter 2025 schedule, which started on 26 October 2025. At its peak, it had approvals for 255 weekly flights in Summer 2024, though the airline never operated its full quota of approvals. The DGCA posted these notices on its website on 6 November.
Flight tracking website Flightradar24 shows VT-BHK last operated on 24 October, VT-HIT last operating on 24 October, while VT-FBC last operated on 26 October. These three aircraft are in Bhopal as per the website.
An IDERA request is a formal legal document empowering an aircraft lessor or lender to have an aircraft deregistered, repossessed, and exported from a country when the lessee defaults on lease payments or loan obligations, as established under the Cape Town Convention. It simplifies the process for creditors to recover their assets from a defaulting airline, providing crucial security in global aircraft financing.
India has ratified the Cape Town Convention by passing the Protection of Interests in Aircraft Objects Bill, 2025, which received the Presidential assent in April 2025, formally bringing the Convention’s provisions concerning aircraft financing and leasing into Indian law. The bill was enacted to align India’s domestic laws with the international treaty, aiming to boost aircraft leasing, reduce costs, and attract investment in the Indian aviation sector. Prior to this, India was a signatory to the Cape Town Convention but the local laws were not aligned, which created troubles for lessors to take the aircraft back as was seen in the case of Go FIRST.
FlyBig’s chequered history
Booking a flight was not possible on the airline’s website as of this afternoon, with the airport list not listing any airport. The airline has approvals for flights to Ambikapur, Bhopal, Bilaspur, Datia, Khajuraho, Raipur and Rewa. It has had a chequered history with the airline starting its operations in Indore with the ATR 72s, shifting them to the North East, subsequently facing challenges with the ATRs and switching to the DHC6s. The airline then shifted its base to Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, starting new routes and airports, then moving to Madhya Pradesh, doing the same. All along, it could not establish a strong presence. The airline operated 163 departures in September and carried only 610 passengers, with a meagre load factor of 20%. This is possibly the reason why continued operations and meeting the financial expenditure became a challenge, even with viability gap funding. Its highest load factor this year was 30.3% recorded in April, which for a 19-seater aircraft is even poor, making it nearly impossible to recover costs even when subsidies and VGF are added.
Regional aviation in India has always been challenging with skeletons tumbling out, from Paramount to Air Costa with the jets and TruJet, Air Pegasus, Air Carnival and others on the props. In a year when Star Air became the biggest and the longest-serving private regional carrier in India, another one is probably on the way to get off the map.
Impact on passengers
The number of impacted passengers would be much fewer than any major airlines in case of flybig, with the September average being less than 4 passengers per flight and the yearly average being less than 5 passengers per flight, but this will impact the count of operational airports in the country with airports like Rewa, Ambikapur and Datia falling off the active airports map in the country, further reducing the number of active airports which started with 126 this winter, down from 129 in the last winter. As the government redraws the UDAN scheme for extension beyond its initial 10 years, it will have to look at how to have well-capitalised regional carriers which can sustain and have their own niche to develop an ecosystem which helps everyone.
The author, Ameya Joshi, is an aviation analyst.
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