Air carrier’s engineers allege negligence, lodge complaint with chairman.A video of a group of Air India staffers partying when they should have been attending to a London-Delhi flight on an unscheduled stopover in the city, allegedly causing it to be delayed by three hours, has stirred trouble for officials in the upper echelons of management. The 1.04 minute video, which contains footage of over two dozen staffers dancing to Bollywood songs at a senior executive’s promotion party in December, went viral on Thursday, with airline staffers quickly circulating it among themselves.The delay pertains to flight AI-116, from London to Delhi, which was diverted to Mumbai on the morning of December 17 due to poor visibility caused by fog in the national capital. The aircraft, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, was meant to leave for Delhi at 9.30 am, but took off at 12.30 pm. (reported by Mumbai Mirror in its edition dated December 19, 2013 headlined ‘AI staff party delayed flight by three hours’). The airline blamed the elements for the hold-up. However, the All-India Service Engineer’s Association (AISEA) had alleged in a December 17 letter to AI’s chairman and managing director Rohit Nandan that the Dreamliner was delayed due to negligence and not weather conditions.The video’s surfacing prompted a second letter of complaint from the AISEA to Nandan, demanding a probe and an explanation. The communication, dated September 19, cites the video as evidence supporting the allegations. “We are forced to write this complaint to you yet again to bring to light the ongoing mismanagement in the company for which only the workmen are blamed whereas the actual guilty never get exposed,” reads the complaint by the engineers, who inspect and clear every aircraft before departure. It is dated September 19. The first letter charging airline staffers with negligence was dispatched to Nandan the day the incident occurred, but wasn’t supported by evidence, circumstantial or otherwise.AI’s scheduling head, Sheela Karunakaran, who is tasked with assigning flight duties to staffers, is among those seen in the video, which was filmed at Medicon Bhavan, Sahar. The AISEA letter imputes the hold-up to the revelry and charges that “Karunakaran, instead of being at the party organised could have operated the flight and thus avoided a three-hour delay ex-Mumbai and thus saved the inconvenience caused to the passengers”. Others visible in the footage are executive director, in flight services Harpreet Singh, whose promotion was being celebrated (she was general manager, customer services when the party was held), joint general manager, customer service captain DX Pais and Air India’s Mumbai airport director Mukesh Bhatia. According to sources in AI, all these officials were directly or, owing to their position in the hierarchy, indirectly responsible for AI-116’s departure to Delhi.The engineers alleged that even as the executives danced to songs like ‘Sheila ki Jawani’ during the party, which went on for over two hours, the Boeing waited at the international airport for the crew to assemble. “Only specially trained staff operate the Dreamliner, and as the ones posted in Mumbai were busy with celebrations, the flight could not take off at the scheduled time of 9.30 am,” AI’s engineers claimed.“Our earlier complaint was rubbished by the management. This time we have evidence to impress upon them that contrary to the projection of delays and dip in on-time performance, which is almost always attributed to the workmen, it is officers-in-charge who are responsible for this mismanagement,” an engineer said.An Air India spokesperson, however, refuted the claims that there was a party and that it delayed the flight. “We need adequate time to look at the video before commenting about it. The fact that it has surfaced nine months later is suspect and needs to be looked at. These are issues which need to be resolved by internal dialogue and not by employees going to the media,” the airline spokesperson said.This is not the first time AI operations have suffered because of the crew. In 2013, a pilot defied an order to fly a direct Mumbai-Delhi flight and stuck to an earlier schedule that required a halt in Jodhpur. The reason: she wanted to pick up Jodhpur’s fabled kachoris.