New Delhi: For about 130 Air India flight attendants who were identified as "overweight" and failed to get in shape despite repeated warnings, it could be curtains now with the aviation regulator refusing to relax weight standards it had introduced two years ago.



The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has turned down a proposal by the government-owned airline to retain the "overweight" cabin crew - mostly women - saying the weight norms had been prescribed on "technical and efficiency grounds" and cannot be rolled back.



"The option before us now is either to ground the cabin crew members falling short of the weight standards or to ask them to opt for voluntary retirement," a senior official in the personnel department of Air India said.



The DGCA had in May 2014 issued a circular directing all domestic airlines to classify flight attendants as "normal", "overweight" or "obese" - based on their BMI - and ensure that only "fitter" crew are assigned aircraft duties.



The BMI is a measure relating a person's weight to height, calculated by dividing the mass in kg by the square of the height in metres.



The circular said women would need to have BMI between 18 and 22 to be declared normal; women with BMI between 22 and 27 would be labelled overweight and those with BMI higher than 27 would be classified as obese. For men, BMI levels between 18 and 25 would be normal, 25 and 29.9 overweight, and above 30 obese.



The directorate had given airlines an 18-month deadline to comply with these norms, arguing that the fitness levels of cabin crew members were directly linked to their speed and agility and thereby to passenger safety during emergencies.



After the DGCA circular arrived, medical examinations were conducted on all 3,500 cabin crew members in Air India - air hostesses and flight stewards - and 600 were found obese or overweight.



They were asked to undergo clinical examinations and recommended weight reduction through a regimen of diet, exercise and lifestyle changes under periodic monitoring.



"As many as 130, however, failed to reduce weight despite several reminders and we sent a letter to DGCA in October last year asking for relaxation in norms for them since they are our senior staff and will be better able to handle international flights than the younger lot," another Air India official said.



"We have decided not to go back on the BMI norms as they have been set after long deliberations over safety concerns," a DGCA official said. "We are hopeful the airline can sail through the situation by giving proper training to flight attendants who are fitter."



Vishakha Verma of the All India Cabin Crew Association, however, said the insistence on the regulation was "disheartening". "We are considering all options - one of them could be challenging the decision in a court of law."



One of the 130 flight attendants, a 43-year-old air hostess based in Mumbai who has been working for the airline for 22 years, said: "I did try to reduce but could not bring down my weight significantly." Requesting not to be named, she added: "Linking one's efficiency merely to BMI is grossly wrong and unfair."



At 162cm, she weighed 70kg and needed to lose more than 12kg to meet the BMI target. She has been able to lose only 2kg.



Calcutta-based strength and conditioning coach Ranadeep Moitra argued that "the BMI is no longer an acceptable means of calculating how overweight one is or isn't. Experts now calculate the fat percentage of the body. It is possible that you can have high BMI yet enjoy good metabolic health. It may also be that your BMI is low yet there is too much fat in the body".