Of all the reasons to scrap a flight...and not just any flight
At 7,807 miles, Air India's AI191 from BOM to EWR may not be anywhere near the longest scheduled and operating commercial flight in the world. But it is, along with UA49, the longest flight ex-India, and it is on the verge of being cancelled.
The reason? Billboards (hoardings).
That's right. There are three billboards of supposedly unreasonable height on the main road that runs perpendicular to the main runway at BOM. And so, the 340-seater B777-300ER aircraft that plies this BOM-EWR route cannot be loaded beyond 260 passengers, due to reasons of take-off weight, so that it can safely clear this billboard. If you find that strange, here's a bit of back-story:
There used to be five billboards, and 4 were taken down and one remained due to legal issues (and if you're even remotely familiar with the legal system in India, you'll know that it could take a couple of lifetimes for cases to be closed in court - there's even one that started in 1878 and as of March 2013, wasn't closed!). Anyway, after this, two more billboards were resurrected! So that's the three that remain, as of date.
And that's what's prompting Air India, which is already bleeding financially, to cut out this route from their schedule, since it makes a loss on every single flight on this route. You can read more about it in this news report from the Times of India.
However, things are looking up, and the local corporation has now stepped in and is in the process of having these billboard removed. So this issue shouldn't last much longer, and hopefully AI won't have to cancel this service. We'll wait and see.
Talking about billboards, this one caused a bit of a laugh, though in overall terms, Jet does seem to have had the last laugh...
The reason? Billboards (hoardings).
That's right. There are three billboards of supposedly unreasonable height on the main road that runs perpendicular to the main runway at BOM. And so, the 340-seater B777-300ER aircraft that plies this BOM-EWR route cannot be loaded beyond 260 passengers, due to reasons of take-off weight, so that it can safely clear this billboard. If you find that strange, here's a bit of back-story:
There used to be five billboards, and 4 were taken down and one remained due to legal issues (and if you're even remotely familiar with the legal system in India, you'll know that it could take a couple of lifetimes for cases to be closed in court - there's even one that started in 1878 and as of March 2013, wasn't closed!). Anyway, after this, two more billboards were resurrected! So that's the three that remain, as of date.
And that's what's prompting Air India, which is already bleeding financially, to cut out this route from their schedule, since it makes a loss on every single flight on this route. You can read more about it in this news report from the Times of India.
However, things are looking up, and the local corporation has now stepped in and is in the process of having these billboard removed. So this issue shouldn't last much longer, and hopefully AI won't have to cancel this service. We'll wait and see.
Talking about billboards, this one caused a bit of a laugh, though in overall terms, Jet does seem to have had the last laugh...
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| Note: This ISN'T the billboard in question, affecting the Air India flight. |
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