Mid-air pee row: Air India gets notice from DGCA over 2 incidents. Read here
2 min read . Updated: 09 Jan 2023, 06:13 PM IST
Premium- In the 6 December, another inebriated man had reportedly urinated on the blanket of a female passenger
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has issued a show cause notice to Air India's accountable manager asking why enforcement action should not be taken against them for dereliction of their regulatory obligations pertaining to passengers' misbehaviour onboard the Paris-New Delhi flight on 6 December 2022.
"Air India didn't report the incident until DGCA sought the incident report from them on 05.01.2023. After perusal of the reply submitted by Air India through email dated 06.01.2023, prima facie it emerges that provisions related to handling of an unruly passenger... have not been complied with. It has been noted that the response of the airline has been lackadaisical and delayed," the regulator said in a statement.
In the 6 December, another inebriated man had reportedly urinated on the blanket of a female passenger. The incidence occurring just 10 days after the Vice President of Wells Fargo's India chapter Shankar Mishra urinated on an elderly female co-passenger while being drunk on a Delhi bound flight from New York.
The airline had been served a show cause notice on 5 January, 2023 by the DGCA for the New York-Delhi flight urinating incident. This show cause notice comes four later.
Earlier, reports have suggested that the man had given a written apology following which no penal action was taken against him. The incident occurred on 6 December 2022 on the Delhi bound Air-India flight from Paris.
“Another incident pertains to another passenger allegedly urinating on a vacant seat and blanket of a fellow female passenger when she went to the lavatory" DGCA noted.
Tata group owned Air India has come under fire from DGCA as two similar incidents had been reported on its international flights.
The DGCA has also informed that another man has reportedly smoked in the lavatory of the Delhi bound flight from Paris.
“Two incidents of passengers misbehaving onboard Paris-New Delhi flight occurred on December 6, 2022 & were brought to notice of DGCA. In first incident, a passenger was caught smoking in lavatory, was drunk & didn't listen to the crew" DGCA said in an official statement.
In the second incident, the on Air India flight 142 and the pilot of the aircraft reported the matter to the Air Traffic Control (ATC) at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport about it, following which the male passenger was apprehended.
The flight landed around 9:40am at Delhi and the airport security was informed that the male passenger was "under the influence of alcohol and he was not following the instructions of the cabin crew and he later peed on a blanket of an onboard lady passenger", airport officials told news agency PTI.
The male passenger was apprehended by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) as soon as he deboarded the plane but was later allowed to leave after the two passengers had a "mutual compromise" and the accused tendered a "written apology", they said.
