Bus drivers may feel good to see the word “pilot” on their cabin door but Air India pilots refused to fly on Tuesday after one of them was called a “driver” by security personnel at Calcutta airport.

M.K. Singh, who was to pilot Air India’s Calcutta-Bagdogra flight at 1.15pm, triggered turbulence on the ground by alleging that Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel manning the baggage counter used the D-word and then assaulted him during the security check.

The altercation was over the dimensions of 43-year-old Singh’s cabin bag, which the CISF men thought was larger than stipulated.

Grounded by the “driver dispute”, the Bagdogra flight took off with 104 passengers only at 3.30pm, more than two hours behind schedule, with another pilot in charge.

Singh’s colleagues at Air India then went into a huddle and decided not to operate any other flight.

Senior officials of the Airports Authority of India, the CISF and Air India met in the evening and averted the strike.

The hardest hit, of course, were the passengers. The Calcutta-Delhi Air India flight scheduled to take off at 5.30pm was combined with the Delhi-Calcutta-Delhi flight at 8pm. The Calcutta-Chennai flight at 6.30pm was combined with a Bangalore-bound flight at 7.55pm.

Singh, a former regional secretary of the Indian Commercial Pilots’ Association (ICPA), said he was waiting for security clearance around 12.45pm when a CISF officer told him that the size of his bag exceeded the permissible dimensions.

“As I was speaking to the official, a few other CISF men surrounded me at the security check counter. One of them was particularly rude and called me a driver. They also assaulted me,” Singh told Metro.

Singh said he had been carrying that bag and others of similar size for the past 15 years of his career as a pilot and had never been questioned. According to the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, any baggage is permissible as long as it fits the X-ray machine.

The CISF denied that Singh was needlessly harassed. “The closed-circuit television feed indicated that the pilot was carrying luggage three times the permissible size. So we stopped him,” a senior officer said.

An employee of the Airports Authority of India said he saw three CISF employees assaulting the pilot, who then tried to hit back. Some passengers and airport staff separated them.

Singh and the CISF lodged contrasting FIRs with the airport police station, both of which were later withdrawn. Air India pilots had then demanded an apology from the CISF and an assurance that such incidents would not recur.

“Until we are assured that pilots will not be harassed and humiliated, we will not operate flights from Calcutta. If pilots are stressed out, aviation safety will be compromised,” said R. Khaingte, the regional secretary (east) of the ICPA.

If pilots were stressed out over one of them being called a driver, bus operators were miffed at Singh considering it an insult.

“His reaction shows what society thinks of driving as a profession. It wasn’t as if Singh was abused. Why did he have to react to the remark?” asked Sadhan Das, the joint secretary of the West Bengal Road Transport Workers’ Federation.