Fuel emergency on flight with Indian boxing team

A SpiceJet flight, ferrying the Indian boxing team to the United Arab Emirates for the Asian Boxing Championship 2021, was forced to circle around Dubai for 45 minutes on Saturday and allowed to land only after it declared a fuel emergency.

While government officials said the delay was caused due to confusion over the flight plan in Iran’s capital Tehran, there were reports that the airline took 37 people (31 passengers and six crew members) on board after declaring the flight to be a cargo one. The airline denied this.

“An Indian boxing contingent travelled on a SpiceJet flight from Delhi to Dubai today. The aircraft has reached Dubai safely and all passengers have cleared immigration. The flight and passengers carried proper documentation. The flight was not filed/categorised as a cargo flight and this information is absolutely wrong and is denied,” an airline spokesperson said. News agency PTI reported that there may have been some confusion over the approval of the contingent’s visit. The contingent included six-time world champion Mary Kom and one of India’s best boxers Amit

Panghal.

Interestingly, Boxing Federation of India subsequently issued a statement, thanking the Indian ambassador to the UAE for his assistance. The statement added that the team flew “under the air bubble arrangement”, with “all relevant permissions” and that two rounds of RT-PCR tests were conducted on the team -- at the airport and the hotel. Ajay Singh, chairman and managing director of Spicejet, is also the president of the Boxing Federation of India.

The airline too said it was a regular passenger flight under the air bubble agreement with UAE. The UAE has barred all travellers from India since April 25 -- except UAE nationals, diplomatic passport holders and official delegation letter holders -

THE DGCA HAS ALSO DECIDED TO CONDUCT AN INQUIRY INTO THE MATTER

due to the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. The flight, SG142, was not allowed to enter the Iran airspace because the local air traffic control did not find the flight in their system, government officials said requesting anonymity.

“The issue began when the Tehran air control declared that they did not have SG142’s flight plan in their system and asked the pilot to connect with the UAE airspace. The Dubai traffic control informed the same [that they did not have the flight plan] and said they couldn’t land unless there was an emergency,” said the officials cited above said.

The flight was allowed to land in Dubai after it declared a fuel emergency, the officials said.

“While the aircraft was holding in the UAE airspace, the RasAl-Khaimah traffic control [in UAE], after learning about the aircraft’s fuel asked SG 142 to land in Dubai,” DGCA officials familiar with the matter said.

According to people familiar with the matter, the flight was yet to be cleared for return to Delhi till Saturday evening. Separately, the DGCA has also decided to conduct an inquiry into the matter. “We will conduct an inquiry. We will take appropriate action, only based on a detailed inquiry, which will take some time,” Arun Kumar, director general of DGCA, said.