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Five Air India pilots and a technician and driver from the airline’s engineering wing tested positive for coronavirus (Covid-19) disease in Mumbai, Maharashtra, sources said Sunday.
Sources at the Mumbai airport said all the pilots are asymptomatic and that the local civic agency sent them home to undergo quarantine. All pilots operate the Boeing 787 fleet and had flown to China by April 20.
The technician and driver from Air India Engineering Services Ltd (AIESL) working for Reliance in his hangar at the Mumbai airport tested positive after performing the swab test on May 7.
The results of his second test, which took place on Saturday, are expected on Monday.
These pilots had to undergo the test on May 8, when the civil aviation ministry made it mandatory for all crew members to be checked by Covid-19 before operating repatriation flights under the massive Vande Bharat mission.
In accordance with ministry guidelines, all operating crews must undergo a swab test before and after operating a flight. The same crew is tested again after a few days and it is only if their second test report is negative, that they are listed for the next flight.
While Air India declined to comment, sources at the airline said reports of these pilots were received on Saturday.
“All crews who previously operated international flights after closure have been required to be quarantined for 14 days. After all five pilots tested positive for the virus, they were not allowed to fly. All of these pilots are based in Mumbai, ”said an Air India official, who did not want to be identified.
A senior Air India official said he was not sure how they contracted the respiratory illness.
“They had operated international cargo flights before, but are not sure if they became infected due to the trip or in Mumbai,” the official quoted above said.
Airline sources said that many members of Air India’s cabin and cabin crew have been quarantined in Delhi and Mumbai due to recently operated flights.
“Even while the crew was registering for 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 a source with the airline.
Hundreds of front-line workers fighting coronavirus disease, including pilots and cabin crew, have been affected by the highly infectious disease.
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