(NEW YORK) — Air India announced on Wednesday it will reduce international service on widebody aircraft by 15% starting June 20 through at least mid-July.
The decision comes less than a week after an Air India airliner carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members en route to the United Kingdom crashed into a building shortly after takeoff on June 12, leaving 246 dead and at least one surviving passenger, local officials and the airline said at the time.
The airline said it’s reducing service due to the safety inspection of aircraft and ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, which have disrupted operations, resulting in 83 flight cancellations over the past six days.
“Given the compounding circumstances that Air India is facing, to ensure stability of our operations, better efficiency and to minimise inconvenience to passengers, Air India has decided to reduce its international services on widebody aircraft by 15% for the next few weeks,” the airline said in a press release.
Passengers will have the option to either reschedule their flights at no additional cost or receive a full refund.
Air India also said 26 out of the 33 Dreamliners in its fleet have now been returned to service following the required safety inspections by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
The airline is also performing “enhanced safety checks” on its Boeing 777 fleet as a precaution and is cooperating with authorities.
The victims of the deadly Air India crash included 241 passengers and crew members, as well as five medical students who were inside the medical college and hospital the aircraft crashed into, according to hospital officials.
Many others inside the building were injured — some seriously — and received treatment, hospital officials said at the time.
The Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad confirmed to ABC News that Vishwaskumar Ramesh, one of the passengers, was the sole survivor who was aboard the aircraft during the crash.
The plane, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, crashed in the Meghaninagar area near Ahmedabad airport, in India’s Gujarat state, the city’s Police Commissioner G.S. Malik said at the time.
Boeing’s Dreamliner planes had not previously been involved in an incident where passenger fatalities were reported.
This plane had more than 41,000 hours of flying time, which is considered average for this aircraft, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics firm.
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