Air India has put 57 ‘overweight’ cabin crew members on ground duty with a warning they will need to shape up or stay grounded.
A senior Air India official said, "These crew members had a higher than permitted body mass index (the ratio of height and weight of an individual). They were asked to lose weight and given deadlines. When they could not do so, the crew staffers were assigned ground jobs.”
The grounded aircrew will have 18 months to get into shape before they are termed permanently unfit.
Two years ago India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation introduced strict requirements for cabin crew’s weight, vision and hearing.