Babu carries old passport; Maha CM delays flight

Air India’s flight AI 191 eventually left about an hour-and-half behind schedule for US.

Mumbai: About 250 passengers bound for Newark were held up at Mumbai airport on Monday after airline staff found that Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’s principal secretary, who was part of a delegation to the US, could not produce a valid visa.

Air India’s flight AI 191 eventually left about an hour-and-half behind schedule after Pravin Pardeshi produced an old passport booklet with a valid visa, officials said. According to airline sources, Pardeshi had a valid multiple entry US visa, but it was not on his passport as he was carrying a new booklet.

Airline sources said the official asked someone to fetch the passport booklet as airline staff waited for the visa. Normally, such travellers are denied boarding and flights depart on schedule. Fadnavis left on a nine-day tour of the US on Monday.

“Ideally, the irregularity should have been spotted at the check-in counter itself. But the official did not face any trouble clearing check-in and immigration. He was only stopped at the boarding gate,” said a senior AI staffer, requesting anonymity.

The AI spokesperson did not respond to calls and queries sent over text messages.

The national carrier has often held up passengers for politicians and senior bureaucrats. In February, an AI flight bound for Hyderabad was delayed for close to an hour because Congress Rajya Sabha MP Renuka Chowdhury, one of the passengers, did not reach the airport on time.

The incident comes months after the airline began penalising its pilots, cabin crew, aircraft maintenance engineers and even private vendors such as catering companies for flight delays caused by them. “It is a clear case of double standards,” the Congress said.