Air India pilot seats mother in cockpit
NEW DELHI: The pilot of an Air India passenger plane seated his mother in the cockpit for a domestic flight, refusing to take off without her after he could not get her a free ticket, a report said yesterday. The pilot allegedly demanded that his mother be issued a “dummy boarding card” at Pune airport in western India and placed her in a jump seat reserved for the crew for the two-hour flight to the capital New Delhi. “When the pilot insisted on taking his mother on board, the operations and commercial departments were informed,” an airport official told the Sunday Express. “The pilot threatened that he would not fly without his mother.” The pilot said that his mother was sick and he could not leave her at the airport, the paper reported. “The GM (general manager)... investigated the matter after it was brought to my notice,” Air India Chairman Rohit Nandan told the Express, adding that disciplinary action was being taken. Air India pilots are allowed some free tickets for themselves and family members subject to seat availability. The duty manager’s report recorded that the fully-booked flight, with 122 passengers on board, was delayed for 20 minutes because of the incident. An Air India spokeswoman told AFP on Sunday that the airline was not immediately available for comment.
Stolen paintings mailed back to US from Greece
NEW YORK: A stolen Salvador Dali painting worth an estimated $150,000 has been recovered after being mailed back to the United States from Greece, police said Saturday. An unidentified man posing as a potential customer snatched the 1949 gouache and watercolor piece “Cartel des Don Juan Tenorio” from New York’s Venus Over Manhattan in a brazen heist on June 19, casually walking out of the month-old art gallery with the frame sticking out of a bag. A police spokesman told AFP that the surrealist work was mailed from the Greek capital Athens and recovered Thursday. “US Customs seized it and (New York Police Department) detectives got it from them and returned it to the owner,” he said, adding that no one has been arrested in connection with the heist. Dali’s 1949 work was on display as part of the gallery’s debut exhibition, which opened in May on Manhattan’s swank Upper East Side. Surveillance video showed a balding man wearing a checkered shirt leaving with the loot.
Protest against protests in Lebanon
BEIRUT: If you can’t beat them, join them. Dozens of Lebanese, exasperated by rampant tire-burning protests across the country, rolled out tires and stopped traffic in the capital Beirut. Police armed with automatic rifles quickly deployed down the street, looking baffled at the small crowd raising the banner “We are tired,” and blocking traffic with colorfully decorated tires. Angry motorists honked their horns. Lebanon, politically fragile after a 1975-1990 civil war, has been plagued for weeks by almost daily demonstrations using burning tires to cut off main highways in to protest everything from political disputes to electricity cuts. Laughing as the group quickly dispersed, the police officer in charge said: “I won’t give them a ticket. We’re all sick of this problem. And their tires are pretty.”
— Compiled from agencies
