NEW DELHI: An Air India flight from Delhi to Moscow returned midway after one of its pilots was found infected with COVID-19.
The crew was quarantined after the plane returned, officials said, adding that another plane would be sent to Moscow to bring back the stranded Indians.
While the national carrier said that it was an oversight in reading the test reports of crew members, aviation regulator the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) confirmed that it ordered a probe into the lapse and asked for a report.
Deployed for the Vande Bharat Mission, the Airbus A320 plane was flying without any passenger to bring stranded Indians. But, it returned midway when ground staff realised that one of the pilots inside the flight was positive.
The matter came to light when the aircraft had reached Uzbekistan’s airspace on Saturday morning. Officials said that the flight had taken off at around 7 am and returned Delhi midway from Uzbekistan at around 12.30 pm on Saturday.
The decision to return back the flight was taken immediately after a staff checking into the test reports found the mistake and by that time, the aircraft had already flown for nearly two hours.
Air India officials said that it was an oversight as the team looking into the pre-flight test reports of the crew members mistakenly read the ‘positive’ report as ‘negative’.
Sources claimed the team checking the test reports has to go through nearly 300 such reports on a daily basis and added that reports also arrive in Excel format.
Air India is operating hundreds of flights under the Narendra Modi government’s ambitious repatriation exercise. As per the guidelines for airlines, crew members have to get themselves tested and can be allowed to operate flights only after testing negative.