Four crew members of Air India were detained by the Saudi Arabia police last week as they could not show them the original copies of their passport.

According to an Air India pilot, crew members of all airlines are required to deposit their passports at the immigration office at Jeddah, which issues a certificate.

Body parts that could belong to passengers killed in one or other of two Air India plane crashes more than years ago have been found on Mont Blanc in the French Alps, sources said today.

Daniel Roche, who is fascinated by air plane accidents and has spent years combing the Bossons Glacier looking for remains, made the discovery yesterday.

KOLKATA: An unexplained glitch in Air India's reservation system that triggered angry protests among passengers in Kolkata this weekend has the airline's commercial team on tenterhooks.

On Saturday, 194 passengers reported for Air India flight AI 731 from Kolkata to Guwahati when the Airbus A 319 aircraft had only 144 seats. Some airlines do resort to overbooking but never at this scale. While the 50 stranded passengers fumed and fretted, AI officials were left flummoxed at how it had happened.

After Tata Group and IndiGo, Air India’s privatisation bid has received yet another boost as private equity players KKR and Co and Warbug Pincus have expressed interest in acquiring the national carrier’s businesses, reported Live Mint.

The two buyout firms separately sought details of the proposed privatisation process cleared by the Union Cabinet in June 2017, two people aware of the development said.

An internal committee of Air India is preparing a list of former employees who are suspected of siphoning-off artwork, an official with the airline said on Friday.

According to the official, who did not wished to be named, the airline will "not take any action if its artworks are returned", however an internal committee has started to prepare a list of missing artwork and suspected former employees who might have them in their possession.

Air India’s net loss after tax narrowed to Rs 3,643 crore and operating profit rose to Rs 300 crore in the last financial year, the government said today. The airline saw its total revenue, including exceptional and extraordinary items, increase to Rs 22,146 crore in 2016 -17 period, as per provisional numbers provided by Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha to the Rajya Sabha. The total revenue stood at Rs 20,524.56 crore in the year-ago period.

Air India is drawing up a proposal to offer voluntary buyouts to just over a third of its 40,000 employees, a senior company official said, one of the largest such offers in India's state sector, as the carrier slashes costs ahead of a 2018 sale.

The official, who could not be named as the plans are not public, said the state-owned airline had also put fleet expansion on hold, scrapping a proposal to lease eight Boeing 787 wide-body aircraft. Air India's board approved the proposal in April but nothing further had been done.

India is considering selling state-owned Air India in parts to make it attractive to potential buyers, as it reviews options to divest the loss-making flagship carrier, several government officials familiar with the situation said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cabinet gave the go-ahead last month for the government to try to sell the airline, after successive governments spent billions of dollars in recent years to keep the airline going.

Air India today said it plans to expand its base in the US by adding Los Angeles and Houston as new destinations, a day after launching the state-carrier’s first direct flight from Delhi to Washington DC. “We are looking at connecting two more cities -– Los Angeles and either Houston or Dallas,” Air India Chairman and MD Ashwani Lohani said at an event to celebrate the launch of the direct non-stop flight yesterday between the capitals of the two largest democracies of the world.

NEW DELHI: State-owned Air India today launched its first flight to Washington DC from New Delhi, thereby adding its fifth destination in the US.

Air India has deployed its 238-seater Boeing 777-200 LR aircraft to cater to the new direct service to the US. The plane offers eight seats in first class, 35 in business and 195 in economy class.

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