No entry: Air India sends ‘wrong’ Boeing 777 to Canada from Delhi, asks it to return from over China

NEW DELHI: A Vancouver-bound Air India aircraft going via the east — and not even taking the Gulf war zone route — had to return to Delhi after nearly nine hours of flying on Thursday. The reason: AI has clearance to operate its Boeing 777-300 extended range (ER) fleet to Canada and not the B777-200 long range (LR) version. But on Thursday (March 19), it sent one of its B777 LR to Vancouver from Delhi as AI 185 with a full planeload of passengers which did not have the clearance to enter Canada.Only when the aircraft had flown for over four hours and was in Chinese airspace near Kunming did the airline realise its very costly mistake. It then called the aircraft back to Delhi where according to flights tracking sites, it landed at 7.19 pm Thursday after taking off from here earlier in the day at 11.34 am.