Crew of Indian airliners are scared to fly to Saudi. Here’s why

Crew of an Air India flight was reportedly detained in Jeddah last week for not carrying original documents and this is sending jitters to Indian airliners operating to Saudi Arabia.

As per the present practice, Saudi Arabia keeps the original passport of crew members on arrival and the members then have only photocopies of their travel documents during their stay in Saudi.

This method has always worried the crew members and the recent turn of events have now scared them.

"We operated AI 931 on July 26, 2017. After landing in Jeddah ... (three crew members) went for dinner... Our taxi was stopped by Saudi police to check our permits. On showing them our Xerox from immigration and our valid AI ID, we were put in police vans and were told not to use cell phones. Luckily, we made a call to (the) hotel and explained the situation and gave our location,” said a message, which was accessed by TOI, by one of the three AI crew members who were allegedly detained in Jeddah last week.

The crew members said they were told that photocopies of passports won't do and that original documents should be shown for checking. They were allowed to leave three hours later.

"Technically our xerox permits (passport copies) are invalid and going out is a big risk," the message says.