As per the information received from the sources, an Air Indian flight which was travelling from Delhi to Moscow had to return midway after the airline’s ground team found out that one of the pilots on board was found out to be positive for the prevailing pandemic infectious virus i.e. coronavirus. It has been stated that while checking the pre-flight test reports of all the crew members, by mistaken it was declared that the captain’s positive report as the negative one and based on that, oversight team of the Air India allowed the captain for the ferry flight to fly back Indians from Moscow but on the way, the pilot reportedly found to be unwell during the flight, hence, was called back.
Now, the Airbus A-320 Neo returned to Delhi at around 12.30 pm on Saturday i.e. May 30th’2020 and finally now the whole crew members as per the norms is been quarantined.
It has also been reported that the Air India plane will be sanitised and another A320 Neo to Moscow will be sent later on a Saturday afternoon to fly back the Indians from there. One of the senior Air India officials also told that “When the A320 plane which was heading to the Moscow without any passengers had already reached Uzbekistan’s airspace has to bring back stranded Indians under Vande Bharat Mission on realising that one of the pilots had been tested COVID-positive.”
The information has been received from the sources regarding the national carrier Air India which have been running several flights under Vande Bharat Mission also informed that over 16000 stranded Indians have been brought back in the first phase which had been run between May 7th and 16th. Also, it has been reported that Air India flights were scheduled to operate from 60 countries in the second phase from May 17 to June 13. The government has declared that all the flights will be evacuated all the Indians from the US, UK, Germany,
South Korea, New Zealand and Sweden. It has also been made compulsion by the governments for all the pilots and crew members to be tested for corona before being allowed to operate the flights for the safety of all the members travelling through the flight.
Mapping of the Air India flight by FlightRadar24 clearly shows that the flight reversed course while flying in Uzbek airspace. Air India flight had started a mission which is been known as the repatriation (return of someone to their own country) exercise meant to help the Indians
stranded abroad during the prevailing pandemic infectious virus COVID-19. It has also been revealed that all the general international flight’s travel is yet to resume, although domestic carriers are back in the air.
It has been revealed by the media that they have received the information from the Air India Team that it was a genuine slip-up due to the huge amount of test result that needs to be gone through. Delhi based team all alone reporting testing of 300 crew members daily due to which more labs had to be persuaded in. Also, the volume of tests has meant that the results come in an excel sheet now. Regarding the checking of the test result status of the crew members who have tested negative and was available for the rostering cleared an
A320 crew for the Delhi-Moscow flight.
On finding such type of a case, the directorate general of civil aviation has begun an investigation based on a preliminary report by every airline. It has been suggested by the governments that as per the standard operating procedure, every pilot including the crew members of any flight are required to go through as mandatory testing for coronavirus and hence, they will be only assigned the duties if the laboratory test results come out to be negative.
