Air India forced to ground ‘overweight’ flight crew
The India air regulator has refused to relax strict rules on ‘overweight’ cabin crew members and will ground 130 flight attendants at Air India.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation turned down a request by Air India to allow it to retain flight attendants classified as overweight.
Most of the 130 crew members are female.
The DGCA said the rules governing the ideal ‘Body Mass Index’ for crew members was drawn up on ‘technical and efficiency grounds.’
Two years ago the regulator gave notice to all domestic airlines to rate all flight attendants as ‘normal’, ‘overweight’ or ‘obese’ and ensure ‘unfit’ crew members lose weight within 18-months.
Air India said it identified 600 as ‘obese’ and were required to reduce weight.
Last year Air India said 130 of these had failed to lose enough weight and asked the DGCA to relent as many of these were senior crew members.
This was refused after ‘long deliberations over safety concerns,’ it said.
“The option before us now is either to ground the cabin crew members falling short of the weight standards or to ask them to opt for voluntary retirement,” an airline official said.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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