Air India Incident On November 26th, which occurred onboard Air India flight AI 102 flying from New York to Delhi in which a drunk passenger, Shankar Mishra, urinated on a female passenger, a senior citizen in her seventies, is creating a wide-spread debate. The woman passenger wrote to Tata Group Chairman N Chandrasekharan expressing her disappointment and stating that the cabin crew was highly insensitive towards the situation.
In a statement post the Air India Incident , Chandrasekaran acknowledged that the airline’s response should have been much swifter in the matter. He said, “The incident on Air India flight AI102 on November 26th, 2022, has been a matter of personal anguish to me and my colleagues at Air India. Air India’s response should have been much swifter. We fell short of addressing this situation the way it should have been.”
Air India Incident – Airline CEO says the airline fell short of addressing the situation
The statement continued, “The Tata group and Air India stand by the safety and well-being of our passengers with full conviction. We will review and repair every process to prevent or address any incidents of such unruly nature.”
Mishra has been sent to judicial custody for 14 days and Air India has imposed a 30-day travel ban on him. An internal probe has also been initiated to investigate if there were lapses in handling the situation by the crew.
In the aftermath of the Air India incident, Air India CEO and Managing Director Campbell Wilson issued a statement acknowledging that the matter could have been handled better. He said, “Air India is deeply concerned about the in-flight instances where customers have suffered due to the condemnable acts of their co-passengers on our aircraft. We regret and are pained about these experiences. Air India acknowledges that it could have handled these matters better, both in the air and on the ground and is committed to taking action.”
According to US-based doctor of audiology, Dr Bhattacharjee, who was also on the flight, there was “fault at multiple levels” in the handling of the incident.
He said that he had alerted the AIR India cabin crew about Mishra, who seemed unable to handle his drink, but the staff just smiled and served him at least one more drink. Dr Bhattacharjee also filed a complaint about the incident on the same day, stating that his complaint was not about the drunk passenger, but rather about the poor judgement of the pilot over the incident.
Meanwhile, in Patna Two drunk passengers on a Delhi-Patna IndiGo flight were arrested by the Patna Airport Police with help of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) on Sunday evening for consuming alcohol on a domestic flight, which is prohibited. Sources said there was no ruckus onboard, and they stopped and apologised when a crew member intervened.
According to protocol, the airline informed the Air Traffic Controller, and they were arrested on arrival, sources said.
Both the passengers were already drunk when they boarded the flight from Delhi, and tried to continue drinking in the 80-minutes-long flight.
