The passengers of a Jaipur-Calcutta flight of Air India were stranded at Jaipur on Sunday night after the co-pilot refused to fly, citing “duty-hour” rules.

“Co-pilot J. Bose did not want to fly as his flight duty time limit would have been over by the time he would reach Calcutta on Sunday night. We could not arrange another pilot at such short notice.” said an airline official.

IC 269, carrying 131 passengers, was scheduled to arrive in Calcutta at 10.30pm on Sunday. It finally landed at 11.30am on Monday.

The flight duty time limit, laid down by the directorate-general of civil aviation, states that a pilot should not fly for more than eight hours a day and not land after 11pm on two consecutive days.

“But the eight-hour rule is often stretched by an hour,” said a pilot.

Airline officials said Bose would have been in the cockpit for more than the stipulated eight hours, had he flown to Calcutta on Sunday night. “It was for the safety of the aircraft and the passengers that he did not want to fly,” an official pointed out.

The flight on the Calcutta-Ahmedabad-Jaipur-Calcutta route landed in Jaipur at 8.35pm, an hour behind schedule. “The delay, due to congestion in Ahmedabad and Jaipur, would have resulted in the violation of the flight duty time rule,” the official said.

Though the airline is not blaming the pilot, his decision had inconvenienced the passengers. Arijit Majumdar, a professor at Indian Institute for Social Welfare and Business Management, Calcutta, was scheduled to return from Jaipur on the flight.

“I reached the airport at 6.15pm. The airline initially announced that the flight was delayed. Later, when it arrived, we were not told that the aircraft would make a detour and fly to Delhi, where another pilot would take over. But with Bose declining to fly, the passengers were put up in a hotel,” added Majumdar.