Air India organised walk-in interviews in Hyderabad last week as part of a recruitment drive, but staff sources at the airline said that no potential employees showed up.

“It’s a statement on the state of affairs at AI that a once sought-after job failed to attract a single applicant,” a senior pilot told the Hindustan Times .

The airline, which has bases at London Heathrow and John F Kennedy in New York, as well as four cities in India, was aiming to fill 197 commander (pilot) and first officer posts for its Airbus fleet through the interviews in India 's fourth largest city.

A panel of senior Air India officials and outside experts were reportedly flown in and lodged in five-star hotels for the interviews, according to another unnamed member of Air India staff, but “not a single person [candidate] turned up”. The source added that applications “should have been invited online” beforehand and panelists only flown in if there were people to interview.

An unnamed Air India official said: “This is the first time in recent memory that the airline organised walk-in interviews for captains and it was completely mismanaged.”

Air India flights are often late because of cabin crew shortages. Photo: Getty

According to the Times of India, Air India suffers from severe delays because of a lack of cabin crew. In January this year V Somasundaran, the Indian aviation secretary, directed the airline to hire 800 flight attendants as soon as possible.

The airline faced previous embarrassment in January this year, when it failed to roster pilots for a Dreamliner from London Heathrow to Delhi, grounding the flight for 12 hours. The same newspaper reported that the beleaguered airline had to accommodate around 200 passengers in hotels for the night.

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The airline has faced significant financial difficulty in recent years, receiving a 67 billion rupee (£724m) government bailout in 2012, and selling five of its eight Boeing 777-200LR aircraft to Etihad Airways in December 2013. In the same year that Air India received the government bailout, The Telegraph reported "expensive spare parts disappearing" and "duty-free alcohol stolen", as well as reports of paying passengers being rejected to make way for Air India staff who were upgraded from economy seats.

Air India had not been able to comment at the time of going to press.