Bharatiya Vayuyan Adhiniyam, 2024: What It Changes (and Does Not) for Pilot Licensing in India

What is the Bharatiya Vayuyan Adhiniyam, 2024?

It is the statute that now governs civil aviation in India — aircraft, aerodromes, air navigation and the licensing of the people who fly and maintain aircraft. Parliament passed it as Act No. 16 of 2024, and it took effect nationally on 1 January 2025, replacing the Aircraft Act, 1934, which had been the governing law for more than nine decades. The full text is published on India Code, the Government of India’s statute repository.

If you are researching pilot training right now, the reason this matters is simple: almost every page on this subject, this one included until this week, cited “the Aircraft Act, 1934” as the governing law. That citation is now technically out of date. Whether the substance behind it is out of date is a separate question, and it is the one this page actually answers.

Did it replace the Aircraft Act, 1934, and when?

Yes, in full. The new Act repeals the old one outright. What it does not do is leave a gap where the old Act’s rules used to sit — and that distinction is the whole story for a prospective pilot.

The mechanism that keeps the old rules alive sits in the new Act itself: section 43 repeals the 1934 Act, and section 43(2) separately saves anything already done, or any rule, regulation or notification already made, under it — unless a specific provision conflicts with the new Act. In plain terms: the parent statute changed name and number; the rulebook made under it, including the one that actually sets licence requirements, did not.

Does this change your CPL, PPL, SPL or ATPL eligibility?

No. The document that sets minimum age, the education requirement and the flying-hour table for every licence is the Aircraft Rules, 1937 — specifically Schedule II. That Schedule was not rewritten, renumbered or amended by the 2024 Act. It continues in force, word for word, under the section 43(2) savings clause above.

The same holds for the 200-hour CPL table and every component inside it — the pilot-in-command time, the cross-country flight, the instrument hours and the night flying — and for the education requirement at 10+2 level. None of it moved. A school, a citation or a page that still names “the Aircraft Act, 1934” as the source of these numbers is using an outdated statute name for figures that are, substantively, still correct — which is a citation problem, not an eligibility problem.

What actually changed: the RTR (A) radio licence

One licensing change is real, and it belongs to RTR (A), not to the pilot licence itself. Examined separately from the DGCA written papers, and required for CPL issue under Section J paragraph 1(g). Radio telephony examination and certification used to sit outside DGCA entirely, administered under India’s general wireless-licensing framework. Under the 2024 Act, it moved.

For a student, the practical effect is administrative rather than substantive: RTR (A) is now one more DGCA-administered process alongside the computer number and the five written papers, rather than a separate government department’s process bolted onto the CPL path. It is still examined separately from those five papers — that has not changed.

Is DGCA still the regulator?

Yes, unchanged. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation remains the licensing and safety oversight authority for pilots, aircraft and flying training organisations, under the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The 2024 Act replaced the parent statute some of DGCA’s rule-making sits under; it did not create a new regulator, transfer licensing to a different body, or change who issues a Commercial Pilot Licence.

What this means if you are starting training now

Nothing on your side changes. The computer number application, the DGCA medical assessment, the five written papers and their pass mark, and the flying-hour requirements all continue exactly as they were before 1 January 2025. There is no new form created by this Act, no re-registration it requires of anyone already in training, and no reason to redo a step you have already completed.

What is worth doing is treating the Act as a reason to double-check any source — a school’s website, a forum post, a PDF you downloaded two years ago — that states a licence requirement without saying where it comes from. Not because the numbers are likely to be wrong, but because a source that cannot name the Aircraft Rules, 1937, Schedule II, or say which section of it applies, was probably never checked against the regulation in the first place. The Act being new is a good prompt to ask that question; it is not, on its own, a reason to expect a different answer.

Full text of the Act is available on India Code, the Government of India’s official statute repository, for anyone who wants to read the savings clause directly rather than take a summary’s word for it.

Ground classes at We One Aviation

We have taught the DGCA ground subjects from Dwarka since 2009, against the same Aircraft Rules, 1937 this page describes — before and after the 2024 Act changed which statute keeps them in force. If a document you have been quoted a requirement from does not name its source, that is worth asking about before you rely on it.

We teach the DGCA ground subjects and arrange flight training with partner flying schools. We do not own aircraft or simulators, we do not employ pilots, and we do not place students into airline jobs — hiring decisions rest with the operator.