AI likely to take action against more staffers by Sunday

Air India, which derostered nine employees including two pilots for taking on board three passengers in excess of the aircraft capacity two months ago, is likely to take action against more staffers by Sunday.

Air India, which derostered nine employees including two pilots for taking on board three passengers in excess of the aircraft capacity two months ago, is likely to take action against more staffers by Sunday.

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"We will take action against those guilty by tomorrow," an airline official said.

The incident occurred on May five when its Mumbai-Mangalore flight IC-179 took off with three extra passengers, with one of them seated in the cockpit.

With the internal probe by its Executive Director of Western Region in progress, the airline has received some feedback as to who ordered carrying of the three passengers and who were the people involved in issuing of boarding passes manually, airline sources said.

There were indications that the three passengers were the wife and two children of one of the pilots who is among the nine employees derostered, they said, adding that some employees were probably "pressurised" to put them on board the packed 172-seater Airbus A-321 aircraft.

While one of the three extra passengers was seated inside the cockpit on the 'jump seat' (the third seat besides the two meant for pilot and co-pilot) in complete violation of security guidelines, the other two were accommodated on seats meant for the cabin crew.

These additional passengers were issued manual boarding passes as the computerised ones cannot be generated once a flight is completely booked.