Air India to run 11 all-women crew flights on Women’s Day (Lead)

March 7th, 2011 - 9:39 pm ICT by IANS  

Ambika Soni Mumbai/New Delhi, March 7 (IANS) National carrier Air India will operate 11 flights with an all-women’s crew on International Women’s Day Tuesday, including an ultra-long haul service, an airline official said.

The ultra-long haul flight from New Delhi to Toronto will be the second time in two years that the airline is operating it with an all-women crew, the official said in Mumbai.

To be flagged off by Civil Aviation Secretary Nazim Zaidi from Terminal 3 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport, AI-187 will be commanded by Capt. Rashmi Miranda with Capt. Sunita Narula, and first officers Varsha Sheoran and Nidhi Suri. Harpreet A. De, head, quality management systems, will carry out a line observation safety audit and the flight would be despatched by Rashmi Verma.

The other scheduled flights, with an all-women crew, include: AI409/410 on Delhi-Patna-Delhi sector, AI-469 on Delhi-Raipur-Nagpur-Delhi route, AI-811/812 on Delhi-Lucknow-Delhi route, AI-603/604 on Mumbai-Bangalore-Mumbai sector, AI-569/167 on Chennai-Mumbai-Chennai sector, AI804/506 on Bangalore-Delhi-Bangalore sector, and Air India Express flight IX302 on Kozhikode-Mumbai sector.

Air India has been operating all-women’s crew flight from November 1985, when Saudamini Deshmukh and Nivedita Bhasin operated a Fokker aircraft flight from Kolkata to Silchar, followed by a jet flight from Mumbai to Goa in 1989.

Air India had organised an all-women crew’s flight on a Boeing 777-200LR plane for a non-stop flight between Mumbai and New York on March 8, 2010, while the flag-carrier also operated a record 22 all-women’s crew flights across domestic and international networks.

Meanwhile, as part of the celebrations for the Women’s Day and aviation centenary year, Civil Aviation Minister Vayalar Ravi and Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni would facilitate women pilots and entrepreneurs in the field of aviation, a civil avaiation ministry release in New Delhi said.

Of its total workforce of 5,300 women employees, AI has a total contingent of 157 women pilots flying its fleet of wide and narrow body aircraft on international and domestic routes, the official said

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