Saurabh Sinha/TNN

New Delhi, Jul 15: Air India pilots and air hostesses may soon fly to overseas destinations and come back — as passengers — on the return leg of the flight to avoid huge hotel expenses abroad. What’s more, the temporary postings of AI engineers abroad to check the aircraft may also be scrapped.

The aircraft engineers could also fly on the plane and check it before the return leg and avoid the huge expense of being posted abroad.

‘‘Some unions representing pilots, cabin crew, and engineers have themselves come forward with this cost-cutting move. Hotel tariffs abroad are in the range of $200-400, in addition to $200 as daily allowance. The foreign stay of crew costs a huge amount and if they return on the same flight, the savings will be enormous,’’ said highly placed sources.

This new concept could be introduced on almost all AI international flights except the ultra-long haul Delhi/Mumbai-New York that have a flying time of over 16 hours. This aircraft reaches JFK Airport in the morning and then takes off late evening. Clearly, such a long return trip, within the space of 12-13 hours is not possible for the crew or engineers. Other flights, like India-Frankfurt or London, could however be under the ambit of the proposed change.

In fact, Jet Airways has some months back started this policy on nearby Gulf and Southeast Asia sectors. The idea — save hotel accommodation and daily allowances.

Apart from this, the problem of having an unduly large number of Indian Airlines pilots positioned in Delhi and Mumbai could also be resolved by an equitable distribution all over the country. Pilots fly — as passengers — to other stations from the two metros to operate flights out of those cities. Thy get a certain portion of their flying allowance even while they fly as passengers to operate flights and the airline shells out several crores under this head.

While most AI employees blame mismanagement in the past few years and government interference for the mess, they are now actively participating in the process to save the airline. While pilots and air hostesses has approached the management with the return-on-same-flight concept, the junior-level employees are offering to work extra at no extra cost.