On Tuesday morning the second batch of Indian evacuees from Egypt landed at Mumbai airport courtesy national carrier Air India (AI). Even the airlines pilot union — Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) pledged full support for emergency evacuation and said that they will forego their flight duty time limitation (FDTL) for the same. The airline also addressed the issue of making the evacuees sign a bond for Rs45,000, stating that this was to incur the cost of its unscheduled operations.
On February 1, 218 Indians — holidayers and those working on deputation — arrived at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) from strife-torn Egypt. To bring these passengers to India, the airline had sent its Mumbai-Jeddah flight further to Cairo on Monday evening. According to an AI source, on Monday the airline decided to send five Boeing 777-300 with a capacity of 329 passengers to Cairo for the next five days, according to the availability of the passengers there. According to the spokesperson for AI, they have not decided on the numbers of the flights but they are working in tandem with the government and are operating flights as and when required.
ICPA also extended its full support to the airline to help bring back the Indians stuck in Cairo. The pilots also said that they will do this job on an honorary basis, notwithstanding any ICPA FDTL and payments.
Though many of the passengers alleged that AI made them sign a bond of Rs 45000 while the one-way ticket is anywhere between Rs15,000 to Rs27,000, the airline said that it had only recovered its costs and not made any “huge profits” as alleged by some quarters. “The exercise was aimed to assist stranded Indian passengers in Egypt,” said a statement from AI.
Explaining the ground realities, an airline official said that the airline does not operate any flight to Egypt and this was an unscheduled commercial operation.
“It was a ferry aircraft that was pulled in from some other scheduled service and sent to Cairo. As we do not have a base there we had to pay for ground handling, man-power and parking charges to the airport authority at Cairo and the cost of the fuel. Thus, passengers were asked to pay Rs45,000 to cover all these costs,” he said. “In fact, Air India had to withdraw one of its services between Mumbai and Cochin and reschedule its flights,” he said.
