New Delhi, India (AHN) – Embattled airline Air India is garnering even more unwanted headlines today. It seems their pilots have a practice of blocking out the cockpit windows with newspapers.

The move to keep out the sun was discovered by new employee Bob Haygooni when he made a midflight visit to the cockpit.

Haygooni, said in a New York Times report, “All you had in the cockpit was this yellowish glow, as the light permeated the newspaper.”

Haygooni, who has been in the industry for nearly 30 years, said it was a visibility hazard he’d never encountered.

However, “this was a normal thing at Air India,” said Haygooni, a United Airlines pilot who flew for the Indian airline for 16 months before he quit.

The state-owned airline has faced numerous criticisms stemming from the government’s haphazard approach to running the company.

The Sydney research group Center for Asia Pacific Aviation has deemed Air India as an example of government mismanagement.

The center’s executive chairman, Peter Harbison, said in a Sydney Morning Herald report that, ”There are other state-owned airlines in other emerging-market countries that have similar problems, but I can’t think of one as bad as Air India.”

Some in India are calling for the government to get out of the airline business. The company has lost more than a billion dollars and customers are choosing other companies for their flight travel because of Air India’s frequent late flights and poor customer service.

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