National carrier Air India (AI) had taken nine employees, including two pilots, off its duty rosters for taking on board three passengers in excess of the aircraft?s capacity on its flight from Mumbai to Mangalore on May 5.

In the airline business, a duty roster is prepared every month, while all employees are expected to follow. The employees, who will face a probe on the incident, will remain off the rosters until the investigation is complete. The additional passengers were issued manual boarding passes as the computerised ones could not be generated because the flight IC-179, a 172-seater Airbus A-321, was completely booked on that day.

This came to light when the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) was carrying out a probe into an incident involving the same flight.

An airline spokesman said while the commander of the flight, the co-pilot and some engineering personnel were derostered soon after the incident, employees involved in issuance of boarding passes for the extra passengers would also face strict disciplinary action.

AI?s CMD Arvind Jadhav has asked the executive director of the western region to probe the manual issuance of boarding passes to the extra passengers, pinpointing responsibility and the disciplinary action against those involved. The spokesperson said guidelines have been issued to all employees to ensure that safety rules and regulations, prescribed by the DGCA, were strictly followed.

The DGCA had taken a serious view of the incident and has asked the airline to take action against the concerned employees of the commercial department for issuing the extra boarding passes manually.

As per the established rules, the extra passengers would not have got any compensation had there been any mishap involving this flight, since taking more passengers than the number of seats violated the basic principles of air safety. Further, strict guidelines to AI employees working in airports are being reiterated for ensuring that safety rules and regulations, as prescribed by the DGCA or any other regulatory authority, are judiciously followed and that in the event of any violation, howsoever minor, strict disciplinary action will be taken against those involved.