MUMBAI: Air India\u2019s decision to operate international charter flights to carry stranded foreigners back to their countries has drawn flak from its pilots and flight attendants, with the voices of protest growing louder by the day. Crew are concerned about increased risk of exposure to COVID-19 during these flight operations.
\nAir India has signed contracts with four countries to operate 18 charter flights to fly German, French, Irish and Canadian nationals back to their countries during lockdown. Early this week, it operated over five charter relief flights to Frankfurt from Mumbai and Delhi. These charter flights would earn Air India more than what a scheduled flight does during normal times.
\nIn a letter sent to his department head on Friday, a cabin crew member, who has been rostered to operate Saturday\u2019s Bengaluru-Kochi-Mumbai flight asked whether the airline\u2019s flight insurance applicable to cabin crew would cover treatment costs if a cabin crew member caught the infection. “You have also not assured whether I will be granted isolation facilities at a company panel hospital for mandatory 14-21 days after the operation of the said flight so as not to endanger my family which includes both my parents who are above 60 years of age,\u2019\u2019 said the senior cabin crew member\u2019s letter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MUMBAI: Air India\u2019s decision to operate international charter flights to carry stranded foreigners back to their countries has drawn flak from its pilots and flight attendants, with the voices of protest growing louder by the day. Crew are concerned about increased risk of exposure to COVID-19 during these flight operations. Air India has signed contracts with four countries to operate 18 charter flights to fly German, French, Irish and Canadian nationals back to their countries during lockdown. Early this week, it operated over five charter relief flights to Frankfurt from Mumbai and Delhi. These charter flights would earn Air India […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[220,130,137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-aviation-the-times-of-india","category-newspapers","category-the-times-of-india"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}