Air India justifies move to divert flight for IPL

Air India on Friday justified its decision to divert the flight for an Indian Premier League (IPL) service.

In a statement issued here, Air India said a Delhi-Coimbatore flight was chartered to ferry IPL players and Poorna Patel for commercial reasons.

Poorna is the daughter of Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation Praful Patel and working with the IPL.

"It was absolutely a commercial decision. Chartered flights make a lot of money for the airline. We keep combining flights according to our operational demand. The IPL anyway has been our customer ever since it began," the airline, said in a statement.

Earlier, a section of the media reported that Poorna, had the Delhi-Coimbatore Air India flight IC 7603 April 20 aborted less than 12 hours before departure to allow the aircraft to be deployed to ferry her and some IPL players from Chandigarh to Chennai.

But a Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said that airlines could provide chartered service only if a particular aircraft was not being used for a scheduled service.