Maharaja agrees to put Black Cats on board flights to US

‘‘The issue is still under consideration,’’ NSG Director General R S Moosahari told The Indian Express today, ‘‘but we are prepared to take the responsibility.’’

This responsibility, sources said, entails:

• Stationing NSG commandos in all three US cities where Air India flies its 23 services—expected to be 28 in a year—every week: New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. (The triweekly Air India flight to LA is scheduled to begin June 11)

• Since all AI operations to US are via Europe—with stopovers in either London, Frankfurt or Paris—the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, working with the Ministry of External Affairs, will have to put in place the necessary protocols with these countries to let armed sky marshals accompany the flights.

• Setting up an NSG team from the existing group of nearly 350 sky marshals. Many of them, as of now, are on board selected domestic flights.

Getting the protocols, sources said, may not be difficult given that even several European airlines are equally affected by this communiqu‚. Moreover, these security measures are part of the series of steps taken by the US after the 9/11 attacks.

The need for urgent action on this message was, in fact, felt after reports came last month that some British Airways and Air France flights had to return midway to the US because they did not have sky marshals on the plane.

‘‘The passenger manifests are already with the US agencies well before the plane reaches their airspace. And if they find even the slightest doubt that the aircraft could be turned into a missile by some suspected passengers, the plane will be returned,’’ explained an official.

For Air India, the possibility of a flight being turned back would be a commercial—if not a PR—nightmare. Even if five flights in a year were returned midway, the loss, according to an Air India estimate, would be to the tune of Rs 30-35 crore. Given that the deployment is expected to cost less than Rs 10 cr a year, this seems too small a price to pay.