Air India was involved in a major disruption of its international service due to a failure in operating procedures. The airline’s flight AI185, which was scheduled to operate from Delhi to Vancouver, had to turn around about four hours into the flight when it was discovered that the map-based flight had departed with an aircraft that did not have authorisation to enter Canadian airspace.
The flight left Delhi at 11:34 on Thursday and was somewhere over the city of Kunming, China, when the call came from Canadian authorities to return to Delhi because the aircraft was not qualified to operate in Canadian airspace. The estimated flight time (including return) was nearly 7.54 hours with an actual land time in Delhi of approximately 07:19 local time.
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The returning aircraft was a Boeing 777-200LR, whereas the airline’s current permitted aircraft for flights to Canada are only the 777-300ER. Every airplane has individual country service requirements for operation, and those requirements may vary depending on airplane type, airplane registration and safety compliance.
Air India indicates that, in accordance with the regulatory policies and procedures of safety and compliance, Air India evaluated the safety of the operation and made its decision to return to India.
Upon arrival at Delhi airport, all travellers disembarked from the aircraft via safe and responsible disembarkation and received hotel accommodations and assistance in order to reduce their inconvenience, as specified by the airline.
Following this, all travellers were re-booked and transported back to their original destination on the same flight as soon as this service was available again the next day.
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The incident is expected to have caused the airline significant financial losses due to the high amount of fuel required for Long-Haul flights (typically burning approximately 8 - 9 tonnes of Jet A at approximately one (1) hour of operational time, depending on the distance travelled during each leg of travel).