Sheela Joshi was trying to get some sleep before her next flight when Indian Airlines officials approached her with an unusual request.

They wanted to weigh her. When they found out that the 48-year-old air hostess was over the company’s regulation weight of 63kg (10st), they promptly bumped her off the flight that she was about to work on and grounded her without pay.

Embarrassed and enraged, Ms Joshi is now taking India’s state carrier to court, accusing it of trying to revamp its image by replacing older — and heavier — stewardesses with younger, thinner recruits.

The High Court in Delhi is due to rule next month on a petition by Ms Joshi and ten other stewardesses demanding that the airline should reverse its new zero tolerance policy on overweight crew.

The stewardesses, who are among 140 aircrew who have been grounded in recent months for being overweight, also want the airline to pay the staff salaries in full when they are not permitted to fly for this reason.

“They want a younger look for the airline,” Ms Joshi told The Times. “But the main reason for us to be there is to guarantee the safety of the passengers. And for that, it’s experience you need, not youth or beauty.”

The dispute reflects the growing competition between India’s state airline and a host of private carriers that have opened since the country began liberalising its economy 15 years ago.

One of them, Kingfisher Airlines, boasts openly that it has the country’s most beautiful stewardesses and kits them out with short skirts and high heels.

But the case also hints at changing attitudes towards female beauty in India, where once buxom models and film stars now increasingly emulate the waifs on Western screens and catwalks.

Indian Airlines says it is simply trying to move with the times. Like many airlines, it stipulates in air crew contracts that male and female staff can be laid off if their weight exceeds a certain level.

In 1990 it issued a circular saying that staff could exceed their maximum natural weight, as defined by company doctors, by up to 10 per cent. But a decade later it changed the excess weight allowance to 7kg. Over the next five years it steadily reduced that to 3kg and in May this year scrapped the allowance altogether. “We are part of the service industry and we have to be more presentable,” Vishwapati Trivedi, the airline’s chairman, said at the time. “So we are trying to get the cabin crew members to be fit.”

Subhro Sanyl, a lawyer for Indian Airlines, said that the company scrapped the allowance because of market forces and security risks.

“Other airlines are taking similar measures,” he said. “This is not a subterfuge to get rid of older hostesses. “We need fitter, more agile hostesses. We don’t want someone who is overweight and unsure about herself if the plane is taken over.”

Ms Joshi, he said, should either take a ground job or try to lose some weight.

The airline’s doctors have said that Ms Joshi should weigh between 53 and 63kg and she was grounded in December for being 67kg.

She is now 62kg — 1kg or 2lb 3oz under the limit — and says that she now skips dinner to avoid putting on weight. But she says that means going on crash diets that could damage her health. Her natural body weight, she says, is 66-67 kg, but Indian Airlines doctors have set it at 53-63 kg.

She did not fly again until June, and was then grounded again in July for being 64.9 kg.She also now does regular workouts to avoid putting on the pounds.

“She can be grounded without pay for being 100 grammes overweight,” her lawyer, Arvind Kumar Sharma, said. “That is unconstitutional.”

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