Pilots protest driver ‘slur’

Pilots protest driver ‘slur’Bus drivers may feel good to see the word “pilot” on their cabin door but Air India pilots refused to fly on Tuesday after one of them was called a “driver” by security personnel at Calcutta airport.
M.K. Singh, who was to pilot Air India’s Calcutta-Bagdogra flight at 1.15pm, triggered turbulence on the ground by alleging that Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel manning the baggage counter used the D-word and then assaulted him during the security check.
The altercation was over the dimensions of 43-year-old Singh’s cabin bag, which the CISF men thought was larger than stipulated.
Grounded by the “driver dispute”, the Bagdogra flight took off with 104 passengers only at 3.30pm, more than two hours behind schedule, with another pilot in charge. Singh’s colleagues at Air India then went into a huddle and decided not to operate any other flight.
Senior officials of the Airports Authority of India, the CISF and Air India met in the evening and averted the strike. The hardest hit, of course, were the passengers. The Calcutta-Delhi Air India flight scheduled to take off at 5.30pm was combined with the Delhi-Calcutta-Delhi flight at 8pm. The Calcutta-Chennai flight at 6.30pm was combined with a Bangalore-bound flight at 7.55pm.
Singh, a former regional secretary of the Indian Commercial Pilots’ Association (ICPA), said he was waiting for security clearance around 12.45pm when a CISF officer told him that the size of his bag exceeded the permissible dimensions.
“As I was speaking to the official, a few other CISF men surrounded me at the security check counter. One of them was particularly rude and called me a driver. They also assaulted me,” Singh told Metro.
Singh said he had been carrying that bag and others of similar size for the past 15 years of his career as a pilot and had never been questioned. According to the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, any baggage is permissible as long as it fits the X-ray machine.
24/09/08 The Telegraph

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Categories: Air India Domestic Sep 2008, Airports Sep 2008, NACIL Sep 2008