New Delhi: The Union aviation ministry has issued a showcause notice to Air India over “serious security and immigration-related lapses” that saw three foreigners fly into Delhi from Amritsar on Sept 4 and, within an hour, depart for Munich on a code-share Lufthansa flight without obtaining mandatory departure immigration clearance.
A possible contributory factor to the lapse was India stopping immigration stamping on boarding cards from Sept 1,” said a source. A mail sent at 12.21am Saturday called for a meeting with all stakeholders at T3 at 11am. Long before Captain Gopinath’s Air Deccan gave birth to low-cost carriers in 2003, budget flights in India used to be the domestic legs of AI’s international flights like Hong Kong/London/Paris-Mumbai-Delhi.
The home and aviation ministries are working on the revamped plan to address teething troubles of two newly-launched reforms — hub-and-spoke and no immigration stamping on international boarding cards — which will be finalised soon. Govt recently launched hub and spoke at Varanasi, Amritsar and Ahmedabad for seamless D-I and I-D transfers on AI.
Titled “Violation of SOP for hub-and-spoke operations resulting in three foreign nationals departing India without mandatory immigration clearance”, the showcause, issued Saturday, said the Italian nationals landed in Delhi on AI 1115 at 12.50am and took off for Munich at 1.45 am. Sources said AI’s first lapse was issuing boarding cards for both the domestic (Amritsar-Delhi) and international (Delhi-Munich) lags in Amritsar to the three D-I foreigners, with one of them being wheelchair-bound. It’s important to have mega hubs at Delhi and Mumbai for airlines like AI and IndiGo, on the lines of Dubai (for Emirates), Doha (Qatar Airways) and Singapore (SIA),” said the source.
There was no immediate response from AI. Several significant changes are now in the works to implement India’s ambitious plan for having hub-and-spoke airports while ensuring foolproof seamless domestic-to-international (D-I), I-D and I-I transfers going ahead. These could include colour-coded tags for domestic and international transfer passengers on AI flights from spoke airports to its hubs and different alighting gates at the hub for a while. “The second lapse happened in Delhi by AI where their boarding cards were not checked — electronically or manually — for whether they had cleared immigration. When the lapse came to light, MHA swung into action and coordinated with the aviation ministry, given security implications. Aviation ministry additional secretary Puneet Kansal took the meeting that lasted over five hours. Suggestions for plugging the gaps included colour-coded wrist bands for passengers on flights from domestic spokes to AI transit hubs like Delhi; having passengers with international connections alight from aerobridge and those with domestic connections from step-ladders (via buses) and having boarding cards with instructions in Hindi and English. These could be short-term measures till long-term systems are put in place. “After Varanasi, Amritsar and Ahmedabad, India plans to include Chandigarh and Guwahati as hubs, followed by Lucknow, Patna and Hyderabad. It’s an ambitious plan that had teething troubles, but it will be taken care of. Since the domestic legs were almost always in the dead of night, their fares used to be less than half of Indian Airlines and Jet Airways. The boarding cards used to be marked D in bold for a domestic passenger flying a Delhi-Mumbai-Paris flight so they did not remain onboard in Mumbai to fly onwards to Paris. There were some slip-ups, but going ahead, technology now allows foolproof I-D, D-I and I-I transfers at emerging Indian hubs.
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