Mangaluru: With all-women crew Air India Express flight takes off to Dammam

Mangaluru, Mar 8: The Air India Express on Tuesday operated its Mangaluru-Dammam flight with all-women crew to celebrate the International Women's Day. The flight took off at 5:05 p.m.

Skippered by Commander Captain Tanya Anand and Captain Yuvika Sandhoo as her first officer, the flight had 159 passengers and 10 infants travelling in the flight of four-hour duration. Deepa Natrajan was the cabin crew in charge with Neha Bijoria, Shalini Kinkar and Chinju Chandran her other cabin crew.

“It is a historic flight and the first international flight to be operated between this coastal city and Saudi Arabia by all-women crew,” said a senior official of Air India.

She further added that the flight would be a symbol of women empowerment. “The airline has immense respect for women and everyone associated with the flight, including pilots, engineers and those at the gate would be women,” she said.

Air India station manager Nagesh Shetty organized a cake cutting ceremony in the presence of JT Radhakrishna and others for this all women crew in check in counter of the airport and wished the crew a safe flight.

Speaking on the occasion Mr Shetty said that the airlines operates all-women flights to celebrate this special day every year.

“This year Air India is operating 20 domestic flights and four international flights with all-women crew. The longest all-women crew flight was operated from New Delhi to San Francisco,” he said.

He said. Incidentally, the airlines operated four all-women crew international flights from South India. Four international flights are Chennai-Trichy-Singapore, Singapore-Trichy-Chennai, Mangaluru-Dammam-Mangaluru and Kochi-Dubai-Kochi.

Air India has 3,765 women employees working as technicians, ground staff, doctor, engineers, luggage handlers and security personnel.