Air India Employees' 5000 Candles

    In 2016, Air India employees lit 5,000 tea light candles by hand to guide planes onto a flooded, blacked-out Mumbai runway. It's one of the clearest real-world pictures of Commitment I use in Stars at India Inc.

    Air India Employees' 5000 Candles

    Air India Employees' 5000 Candles: A Story of Commitment

    On one monsoon night in 2016, the runway lights at Mumbai airport went dark under floodwater — and a group of Air India ground staff, with no order from anyone, lit 5,000 tea light candles by hand so planes could land safely. No memo asked them to. No overtime form was filled first. This is the story I use, again and again, to teach one of the rarest traits I have seen in Indian workplaces: Commitment.

    In short

    Where this sits on your Winning Kite

    Commitment is the ninth trait in the Self-Motivation cluster, and it lives on the EQ — left — side of your Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework). A kite doesn't fly because one side is strong; it flies because EQ, RQ and PQ pull together in balance. Commitment is one of the strongest EQ strings you can hold, because it is what keeps a person flying straight when the wind — deadlines, setbacks, temptations — tries to pull them sideways.

    The night the runway went dark

    It was 2016, monsoon season, and Mumbai was getting the kind of rain that shuts the city down. At the airport, the runway lighting system — the string of lights that guides a pilot's eyes onto the tarmac in the dark — got submerged in floodwater. Without those lights, landing an aircraft safely at night is close to impossible. Flight after flight had to be diverted to other cities. Passengers were stranded. Crews were stuck. It was, by any measure, a crisis — the kind that ends up as a bad headline about the airline's reliability the next morning.

    This is the point in most companies where employees do exactly what their job description says, wait for engineering to fix the fault, and go home. Nobody would have blamed the Mumbai airport ground staff for doing precisely that. The electrical fault wasn't their department's problem to solve at 2 a.m. in the pouring rain.

    But a group of Air India employees at the Mumbai airport office looked at the problem differently. If the runway needed light to guide planes down safely, then light is what they would give it — with or without the electrical system working. They gathered 5,000 tea light candles and, in the middle of the storm, laid them out along the edges of the runway by hand, working for hours in the wind and the rain to keep them lit and in place, one gust away from going dark again and again.

    It worked. Pilots who had been circling or preparing to divert were able to bring their aircraft down safely, guided by a runway lit not by electricity but by 5,000 small flames that a handful of committed employees refused to let go out. No passenger was stranded because of that fault. No headline was written about Air India's failure that night. Instead, what should have been a disaster became, quietly, a story about what a company's people are capable of when they decide the outcome is theirs to own.

    Why this is Commitment — and not just "going the extra mile"

    I want to be precise about what makes this story a Commitment story rather than just a nice tale about hard work. Commitment is an emotional quality that creates a strong attachment to a goal — personal or organisational — strong enough that you stay focused on it even when distractions, fatigue, and easier options are right there in front of you. Committed professionals are the ones who work round the clock when it's needed, who make personal sacrifices for the team's success, who are ready to take on an urgent mission at the eleventh hour without being asked twice.

    Those Air India employees weren't rewarded in advance. There was no bonus promised for candle-lighting duty. There was no manager standing over them with a checklist. What moved them was a sense that the airline's reputation, and the safety of passengers on those circling planes, was their responsibility — not someone else's. That is Commitment in its purest form: taking ownership of an outcome nobody assigned to you, because you have decided the mission is yours.

    As Salman Khan's famous line from Wanted goes — "Ek baar jo maine commitment kar di, toh main khud ki bhi nahi sunta" (once I make a commitment, I don't even listen to myself). It's a filmy line, but it captures something true: commitment isn't a feeling you wait to have. It's a decision you keep making even when your own comfort is arguing against it.

    Visitors and residents: which one are you at work?

    In every organisation I have trained in — the Army, RBI, BARC, JSW, and 1000+ leaders across corporate India — I have found it useful to sort people into two types: visitors and residents.

    Visitors come to work for the salary. They clock in at 9 and clock out at 5. They do the bare minimum, they aren't invested in the company's mission, and if a better offer comes along tomorrow, they're gone without a backward glance. They watch the clock, count their hours, chase credit, and when a decision goes against their personal interest, it causes them real pain — because there's a gap between them and the team they supposedly belong to.

    Residents feel a sense of belonging. They take pride in the work. They care whether the company succeeds, not just whether their own targets are hit. They go the extra mile — not because they have to, but because they want to. They readily make personal sacrifices for the team's goals, use the company's core values to guide their decisions, and stay loyal even when times are tough. They put "we" above "me."

    The Air India employees who lit those 5,000 candles were residents in the truest sense that night. So was Shrimant Nagargoje, the Operations Head of a training company I've worked closely with, who once told me: "As the head of this company, I am proud that I'm making a change in society. I always believe in keeping we above me." He's the kind of leader who stays late when there's a deadline, who sacrifices personal time for the team's goals — not out of obligation, but because the mission matters to him personally.

    I'll add one caution here, because I don't want this to sound like a call for blind loyalty. Commitment doesn't mean sacrificing yourself endlessly for an organisation that doesn't deserve it. As the management thinker Tom Peters has pointed out, the healthier version of loyalty in a modern workplace is balanced: loyalty to your colleagues, your team, your project, your customers — and loyalty to yourself. You manage your own career and growth while still showing up fully for shared goals. That balance is what makes commitment sustainable instead of self-destructive.

    Two more Indian stories that sit beside this one

    I never teach Commitment through a single story, because one example can feel like an outlier. So in the same chapter of Stars at India Inc. I place the Air India candles story next to two others.

    The first is Captain Vikram Batra, posthumously awarded the Param Vir Chakra — India's highest military honour — for his role in the 1999 Kargil War. Captain Batra was tasked with capturing Point 4875, a heavily fortified peak held by Pakistani troops. Despite relentless enemy fire and brutal weather, his team took the peak. In the operation that followed to clear the area, he was hit and severely wounded — and he refused evacuation, continuing to lead his team until the position was fully secured. His commitment to the mission outweighed even his instinct for his own survival. It is an extreme example, deliberately so — it shows commitment at its absolute ceiling.

    The second is closer to home: Ankush, who works with our own training company. He has never hesitated to travel to distant, uncomfortable locations to make sure our trainers are properly prepared to deliver their sessions. His commitment was tested for real when his father fell seriously ill and he had a training batch scheduled in Pune that the company could not reschedule. It was a brutally difficult call to make, but Ankush chose to honour his commitment — he travelled to Pune, delivered the sessions with full focus and professionalism, and only allowed himself to process his father's illness once the batch was done. He didn't do it because we forced him to. He did it because he had decided, long before that crisis, that this was the standard he held himself to.

    I also think often of Avinash Aghav, a Police Inspector I spoke with during the COVID-19 lockdown, when police, doctors, nurses and sanitation workers stayed on the frontlines while the rest of us stayed home. He told me: "People may insult us, they may treat us badly. But we are committed to our job. Our personal interests don't matter here. It's our duty to protect this nation, and I feel proud that I'm making a difference." Different uniform, different stakes, same trait.

    Why so few professionals actually have it

    If commitment is this powerful, why is it so rare? In my sessions I break it down into four honest reasons.

    Distractions and temptations. You are never distracted by things you don't love — you are distracted by things you do love. The professional who rushes out at exactly 7 p.m. every evening for a drink, even with pending work and a team that needs him, isn't lazy; he is pulled by something that gives him real pleasure. In Dangal, Geeta stays committed to her boxing in the village, but in the city, the glamour and comfort of her new life pull her focus away — until she recommits. Milkha Singh, in Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, loses himself to parties early in his success before he refocuses and becomes a champion. The pull is always toward something genuinely enjoyable — that's exactly why it's dangerous.

    Setbacks and failures. Businessmen abandon ventures after losses. Writers quit after enough rejections. Salespeople lose heart after a hundred "no"s. Commitment is easy when things are going well; it is tested, and often broken, the moment things stop going well.

    Lack of alignment with the mission. If you're only showing up for the paycheck, you will never be genuinely committed — there's nothing underneath the transaction to hold onto when the transaction gets hard.

    Fear of sacrifice. Commitment costs something — late nights, cancelled plans, personal discomfort. People want the outcome of commitment without paying its price, and that math never works out.

    Building commitment deliberately — the Golden Triad

    Commitment isn't a personality trait you either have or don't. I coach leaders and teams to build it deliberately, using what I call the Golden Triad: Focus → Meaning → Action → Results. What you choose to focus on determines the meaning you assign to a situation, and the meaning you assign drives what you actually do. Focus on the distraction — the drink, the party, the easier task — and you'll always find a reason to break your commitment. Focus on the larger mission, on the impact your work has on real people, and you'll find the strength to stay in it.

    Practically, that means:

    This is squarely EQ work, but it doesn't function in isolation — a committed employee without the RQ to collaborate, or the PQ to actually execute, burns out fast or gets nowhere. This is why I always teach commitment as one string on the Winning Kite, never as a standalone trick. If you want the fuller picture of how EQ traits like this one interact with Relationship Intelligence and Productivity to lift performance, that's exactly what we build out in our corporate training programs and in the flagship Signature Programs.

    Visitor mindsetResident mindset
    Waits for someone else to fix the problemPicks up 5,000 candles and starts walking the runway
    Counts hours workedCounts problems solved
    Leaves the moment a better offer appearsStays loyal through the tough years
    "Not my department""It's my company's reputation on the line"

    Daniel Goleman's work on emotional intelligence describes self-regulation and motivation as core EQ competencies that separate high performers from the merely talented — which is the same idea I'm describing here, just arrived at from a different direction, through Indian workplace stories rather than Western research labs. The insight holds either way: commitment is trainable, not just innate.

    If your team could use a structured, hands-on session on this exact trait — and the other 24 that make up the EQ side of the Winning Kite — you can explore how I run these for organisations at All Corporate Training Topics, or reach out directly through the contact page.

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    Avinash Chate

    TEDx Speaker · Founder, The Future Corporate · Author of Stars at India Inc.

    Avinash has trained the Indian Army, BRO, RBI, BARC, JSW Steel and 1000+ corporate leaders across India. His work focuses on leadership, emotional intelligence and behavioural training rooted in Indian values and modern business needs.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What is the Air India 5000 candles story about?

    In 2016, heavy monsoon rains flooded the runway lighting system at Mumbai airport, forcing flights to divert. Air India ground staff at Mumbai airport office lit 5,000 tea light candles by hand along the runway edges so pilots could land safely, working for hours through the rain and wind without being asked to.

    Why is the Air India candles story used to teach commitment?

    Because nobody assigned this task to those employees. There was no policy, no manager's order, no overtime claim filed in advance. They saw a problem that threatened the company's reputation and passenger safety, and they solved it with what was on hand. That is the difference between a "visitor" at work and a "resident" — and it is the essence of Commitment, Trait #9 on the EQ side of the Winning Kite.

    Where does Commitment sit on the Winning Kite framework?

    Commitment is Trait #9 in the Self-Motivation cluster on the EQ (left) side of the Winning Kite. EQ traits like Commitment work alongside RQ (Relationship Intelligence) and PQ (Productivity) to lift the kite toward Success — you rise on balance across all three, not strength in one alone.

    How can a manager build this kind of commitment in a team?

    Align people with a mission bigger than their job description, give them clear goals and real ownership, model discipline yourself, and celebrate the unglamorous saves — not just the visible wins. Commitment grows when people feel like residents of the company, not visitors passing through it.

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