“Since refusal of flight by Capt N K Beri was without proper reasoning, he was served a show cause notice,” an Air India spokesperson said in a statement.

Beri had reportedly said that he had refused to fly the aircraft because of a problem with its landing gear and he claimed he took the decision on grounds of safety of the passengers.

Countering his contentions, the spokesperson said “the reality is that flight AI-882 of May 27 operating on the sector Riyadh-Mumbai was grounded due to a technical snag, that is the landing gear could not be retracted on take-off.

“Passengers of this flight were transferred to other flights to ensure that they were not inconvenienced,” he said.

As Air India does not have a technical base in Riyadh, the engineer advised that the aircraft should be ferried to the Mumbai engineering base “under Minimum Equipment List (a DGCA approved document), without passengers, so that the aircraft could be attended to.”