AI's 'humanitarian gesture' raises security concerns

Mumbai: A day after Air India (AI) called back its Mumbai-Nagpur flight to accommodate a passenger on humanitarian grounds on Friday, questions were raised about how dilligent airline officials are while conducting checks on passengers boarding an aircraft.
The AI flight IC 629 took off from Mumbai without a checked-in passenger and had to return to take him back. According to AI claims, the flight was called back on humanitarian grounds as it was urgent for the passenger to reach Nagpur.
However, the fact that the passenger, who finally did take the Nagpur flight, had earlier boarded an Ahemdabad-bound flight by mistake, clearly indicated that neither the boarding passes were checked properly by airline employees nor was their head count accurate, a source said. Moreover, though the AI claimed to have turned the flight back to accommodate only one passenger, the load count their pilot gave to the Air Traffic Control (ATC) indicated an addition of seven more passengers.
All these things pointed at a skewed calculation on the part of AI employees, said security officials. These officials as well as traffic controllers said the incident showed that boarding passes were not properly checked while allowing passengers on board.
On Friday, Jitendra Bhargava, executive director, AI had told TOI that they did not conduct a head count of passengers on all flights. Security officials, said it wouldn't have been hard to spot a missing passenger if the count was conducted properly.
The passenger load figure provided by the Nagpur flight pilot raises further doubts. Usually, before a flight is given clearance for take-off, the pilot has to specify the number of passengers onboard. According to ATC sources in Mumbai, the flight took off with 91 passengers initially. The second take-off it made was with 97 passengers.
23/11/08 Chinmayi Shalya/Times of India

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Categories: Air India Domestic Nov 2008, Airports Nov 2008, NACIL Nov 2008, Safety Nov 2008