Pilot Skipped Breathalyzer Test Before Flight, Plane Called Back After Takeoff

An Air India flight was called back to the airport just a few minutes following takeoff on Sunday after it was discovered that one of the plane’s pilots had skipped the breathalyzer test.

Air India flight AI-332 departed from the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi at 2:08 p.m. local time (3:38 a.m. EST) – 23 minutes behind schedule – and was on its way to Bangkok, Thailand when it was called back.

“The flight was scheduled for a 1.45 p.m. [local time, 3:15 a.m. EST] departure and the pilots should have undergone the Breathalyzer test about an hour earlier. While the commander took the test, the first officer skipped it,” one source close to the matter told local daily Times Of India. "Before the departure, the commander asked whether the copilot had carried out the Breathalyzer to which he replied in positive. But it emerged that he hadn't. The flight was called back.”

After the plane landed back at the Delhi airport, it was delayed for nearly five hours, so much so that the work shift of the commander of the plane got over resulting in the airline having to assign a different commander for the rescheduled flight. According to One India, a number of passengers on board the flight complained of being forced to wait for at least four hours without being given a proper reason for the delay.

“But 10 minutes post departure, the commander was informed that the first officer hadn’t undergone the test. The flight was asked to return. It landed back in Delhi at 3:59 p.m. [local time, 5:29 a.m. EST]. The first officer was grounded on return. The flight couldn’t depart soon as the commander had by then reached his Flight Duty Time limit. So another commander had to be rostered and the flight departed at 8:47 p.m. [local time, 10:17 a.m. EST],” the source added.

The incident came on the same day another pilot and Air India's chief of operations, Captain AK Kathpalia, was grounded because he failed to clear two breathalyzer tests, conducted in a span of 20 minutes apart, hours before he was to operate the airline's AI-111 flight to London from New Delhi on Sunday afternoon.

Kathpalia denied consuming alcohol before taking the alcohol test and said the failed test results were a conspiracy being hatched against him amid internal feud going on in Air India, which had recently come under huge debts and was no longer generating profit.

“It was 1:30 in the afternoon [local time, 3 a.m. EST], only a bloody stark raving alcoholic is bloody drunk at 1:30 in the afternoon," Kathpalia said, Khaleej Times reported. "I am going to contest this."

In 2017, Kathpalia was suspended for three months after he refused to take breathalyzer tests before and after his domestic flight from Bengaluru, India, and New Delhi in January, a court document on the complaint said.