The airline acted after the woman wrote to Tata Group chairman N Chandrasekaran.
New Delhi:
A drunk man urinated on a fellow passenger in business class on an Air India flight in November and disappeared with no action being taken. Weeks after the incident, Air India filed a lawsuit, recommending that the recalcitrant flier be put on the no-fly list.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has requested the airline for a report on the incident, which was uncovered after the woman wrote to Air India Group Chairman N Chandrasekaran.
“We will take action against those found negligent,” the regulator said.
On November 26, the intoxicated passenger allegedly unzipped and urinated on a fellow passenger in her 70s in business class on an Air India flight from New York to Delhi. The lights had been dimmed after the meal.
After urinating, the man reportedly exposed himself repeatedly and did not move until another passenger asked him to return to his seat.
The woman complained to the crew, telling them that her clothes, shoes and bag were soaked in urine. The crew reportedly gave her pajamas and slippers and told her to return to her seat, claiming that no other seat was available.
After the flight landed in Delhi, the passenger allegedly left the country without being charged for his egregious behavior.
Disappointed with the airline’s handling of the incident, the woman wrote to Mr Chandrasekaran the next day, describing what she called the “most traumatic flight I have ever experienced”.
“I am writing to express my deep disappointment at the appalling incident that occurred during my business class journey on flight AI102 (which took place yesterday, on 26 This was the most traumatic flight I have ever experienced: In flight, briefly after lunch was served and the light was turned off, I was just getting ready to sleep and another passenger walked up to my seat completely drunk. He unzipped his pants, relieved himself and continued to expose his privates. The passenger who was sitting next to me , asked him to return to his seat. He did not respond immediately, but left the area after a few moments,” she said in the letter.
Air India has now filed a complaint against the man with the police. “Air India set up an internal committee and recommended putting the male passenger on the ‘no-fly list’. The matter is under a government committee and a decision is awaited,” sources said.
The woman reportedly wrote that she did not want to sit in the soiled seat, so she was assigned a crew seat. After an hour, she was reportedly told by the crew to return to her seat, which was covered with sheets but still stank of urine. When she firmly refused to take the same seat, she was reassigned to another crew seat, where she spent the remaining five hours of the flight.
“I later learned from a fellow passenger that there were several seats available in First Class and he suggested the crew move me to one of them rather than being forced to sit in a dirty seat. Obviously the crew didn’t feel that caring for a distressed passenger was a priority. At the end of the flight the staff told me they would get me a wheelchair to ensure I could get through customs as early as possible. However, the wheelchair dropped me off in a waiting area where I “I waited 30 minutes and no one came to pick me up. I ended up going through customs on my own and picked up the luggage myself – all in Air India pajamas and socks.” , the woman wrote, calling the Air India crew deeply unprofessional.
Air India issued a sharp condemnation and immediately apologized after an identical incident in August 2018, when a drunk man urinated on a passenger’s seat on a flight from New York to Delhi.
#FlyAI : #Airindia#Expression
AI102 JFK-DEL on August 30th pic.twitter.com/CcOmmmlNPR— Air India (@airindiain) September 1, 2018
This is the latest incident of unruly behavior on a flight.
On December 26, a group of passengers beat a passenger on a flight from Bangkok to Kolkata on Thai Smile after refusing to put his seat upright before take-off. On December 16, a Video emerged from a row on an IndiGo flight in which a stewardess told the passenger, “I’m not your servant.”
