Safety checks to samosas for students: How airlines are managing evacuation

IndiGo started its maiden service to Istanbul in March 2019, but a year later, the Covid-19 pandemic forced it to suspend the flights. Now the airline is flying to Istanbul again, albeit as a transit halt for the evacuation flights under Operation Ganga.

From carrying out safety assessments to setting up of temporary bases, airlines are taking elaborate steps to ensure quick and efficient passage to students fleeing Ukraine. While Air India is operating non-stop flights to Budapest and Bucharest, other airlines are operating one-stop flights due to limitations of narrow body Airbus and Boeing aircraft.

The Ministry of External Affairs said on Tuesday that 26 evacuation flights are planned over the next three days.

On Monday, IndiGo positioned over 60 employees, including pilots, cabin crew and engineers in Istanbul for evacuation. One set of pilots and crew operates flights between India and Istanbul and another operates flights to Hungary, Poland and Romania and back. Over the past three days, IndiGo operated 12 evacuation flights from the three countries.

SpiceJet is also setting up a temporary crew base at Kutaisi in Georgia to enable quick turnaround of flights. For its first two flights the aircraft had to be parked in Budapest and Kosice for 22 hours due to pilot and crew duty-time requirements. The airline is operating four flights from Bucharest and Kosice in Slovakia on Thursday and Friday. Air India Express is carrying out crew changes in Kuwait.

The airlines carried safety assessments since these are not regular destinations for them. This included gathering all the details of the destination airport. Details of enroute route airports too were analysed in case a diversion is needed.  Pilots and engineers were also briefed about de-icing of aircraft in event of snowfall in destination airports.

“Officers from the operations and engineering department also made a note of likely hazards. A brief was prepared and shared with pilots operating the flights,” said a captain from IndiGo.

“We got a request from the government to operate a flight on Sunday morning.  We formed six teams to work on the SOP for the flight. The documents were submitted to the DGCA and it approved it on the same day. We operated the Bucharest flight on Monday,” said an Air India Express captain.The pilots were advised to avoid conflict zones and carried extra contingency fuel to cater for possible closure of routes.

The airline also tied up with the airport ground handling company which also issues boarding passes and check-ins bags of students.

On board too the airlines are trying to make the students as comfortable as possible. “Typically our complimentary meal consists just of a sandwich. On the Bucharest-Mumbai flight we served hot samosas to passengers immediately after take off. We served them biryani as well,” an Air India Express official said.