Five pilots of Air India and a technician and a driver of the airline’s engineering wing have tested positive for the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in Maharashtra’s Mumbai, sources said on Sunday.
Sources in the Mumbai airport said all the pilots are asymptomatic and have been sent home by the local civic body for self-quarantine. All the pilots operate Boeing 787 fleet and had flown to China before April 20.
The technician and the driver of Air India Engineering Services Ltd (AIESL) working for Reliance in their hangar at the Mumbai airport tested positive after they undertook the swab test on May 7.
The results of their second test, which was done on Saturday, are expected by Monday.These pilots had to undergo the test on May 8 when the ministry of civil aviation made it mandatory for all the crew members to get themselves checked for Covid-19 before operating repatriation flights under the massive Vande Bharat mission.
According to the ministry’s guidelines, all the operating crew have to undergo a swab test before and after operating a flight. The same crew is tested again after few days and it is only if their second test report is negative, that they are rostered for the next flight.
While Air India refused to comment, sources in the airline said reports of these pilots were received on Saturday.All crew who have earlier operated international flights after lockdown have been asked to mandatorily quarantine themselves for 14 days. After the five pilots were tested positive for the virus, they were not allowed to fly. All these pilots are based in Mumbai,” an Air India official, who did not want to be named, said.
A senior Air India official said it was not sure how they contracted the respiratory disease.
“They had operated international cargo flights earlier but it is not sure whether they got infected due to the travel or in Mumbai,” the official cited above said.Airlines sources said many Air India cabin and cockpit crew members have been kept under quarantine in Delhi and Mumbai because of the flights they have operated recently.
“Even while rostering crew for the repatriation flights under the government’s Vande Bharat mission, the airline had to face difficulties in planning the flights because many of them were not eligible to operate due to mandatory isolation,” said an airline source.
Hundreds of workers on the frontline fighting the coronavirus disease, including pilots and cabin crews, have been affected by the highly infectious disease.
