A harrowing experience of Trinamool chief and Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee has prompted Minister of State for Health and party MP Dinesh Trivedi to shot a letter directly to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking a review of the “entire working” of Air India. The junior minister has also asked Singh to get the matters related to AI examined “so that corrective steps can be taken”.
Trivedi recalled that on November 7, he was returning to Delhi along with Banerjee on the flight AI 861 from Kolkata. The flight was delayed for almost an hour as there was no pilot. Then a man wearing jeans and T-Shirt was seen in the cockpit in the flight commander’s seat. “On enquiry, I was told that he was the commander, Capt A K Mohan. When I enquired why he was not in uniform, cabin crew mentioned that the pilot had been ordered at the last minute to operate the flight,” Trivedi wrote in his letter.
Much to his woes, Trivedi and Banerjee’s AI flight to Kolkata on Thursday again got delayed for similar reasons.
The tone of the letter not only alleges foul play to ruin AI’s prospects but it has reached Prime Minister’s table when a cabinet reshuffle is imminent. UPA sources observed that the letter has come from Trivedi, who, apart from having deep knowledge about the sector also has an eye in the ministerial berth of Civil Aviation.
According to Trivedi’s letter, further queries revealed that Mohan was about to board a Hyderabad-bound flight as a passenger when he was asked to fly AI 861. “As if, this was not enough after landing in Delhi and being barely 50 yards from the parking bay the plane was stopped as the mandatory marshal was not present.”
Eventually, according to Trivedi, a marshal came but parked the plane without the mandatory use of illuminated wands. At 11:30 PM there was no bus for the passengers to reach the arrival lounge as there was no commercial staff of AI available at the airport.