Missing pilot delays take-off; ministers stranded

Union Ministers Prakash Javadekar and Piyush Goyal were among the passengers stranded at the Cochin International Airport on Thursday after the pilot assigned to fly the aircraft failed to turn up.

The passengers had already been issued their boarding passes in a Jet Airways flight from Kochi to Mumbai, scheduled for a departure at 4.10 pm, when the airline announced that the pilot was “not available”.

The airline announced a delay of over two hours. While Goyal stayed back and travelled in the same flight which took off at 6.15 pm, Javadekar left to New Delhi in another flight, sources in the airport said.

More details about the pilot’s absence are awaited, the sources said. “We have formally sought an explanation from the airline in connection with the incident,” a spokesperson for the Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL) told Deccan Herald.