An Air India flight from New York was diverted to Canada after it was found that human remains meant for Egypt Air had wrongfully been loaded into the plane.After Flight No AI-112 took off from JFK Airport on Friday, it was brought to the notice of the commander that human remains had wrongfully been loaded on the flight. Sources said the unidentified cargo led to a security scare. However, the New York ATC refused permission to the commander, Capt T.S. Gill to return back. Therefore, the flight was taken to the nearest country, ie Canada. The New York-London-Mumbai flight thus got delayed and is expected on Sunday morning.According to a source, the incident occurred because of the lack of airline security supervision at JFK Airport because ‘‘whatever goes into the aircraft has to be security-cleared and identified.’’ As against the standard force of three security officers, there is only one to supervise all functions at NY airport.‘‘On Friday, the officer was on leave,’’the source said. A-I also operates flights from Los Angeles, Chicago and Newark, but there is no security officer to supervise at these stations. The officer from NY leaves his base and visits the other three stations for security checks or to attend to emergencies. ‘‘Even when he is off or on leave, the security functions go unsupervised,’’the source said.Chairman and Managing Director V. Thulasidas said, ‘‘When it was brought to our attention that the ground handling agents had wrongly loaded the human remains which we had no knowledge of we decided to divert the plane to the nearest airport, ie Gander in Canada, which is a diversion port for A-I.’’ He said since it was some hours after the flight took off, it was decided to land at Gander airport which was some 30 minutes away. ‘‘Preliminarily we have learnt that the ground handling agency is common for AI and Egypt Air. However I have asked for an inquiry into the incident,’’Thulasidas said.
