Air India on Wednesday said it had imposed a 30-day travel ban on a man who allegedly urinated on his female co-passenger in a drunken state onboard a flight from New York to Delhi on November 26 and instituted an internal probe to find if there were lapses in the crew’s handling the situation.
Soon, stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra tweeted “Two Air Indias” and shared a screenshot of the airline banning him “until further notice” in January 2020 after he had made comments aimed at Republic TV’s Arnab Goswami on board an IndiGo flight.
Kamra juxtaposed this with another screenshot of a news flash of the 30-day ban on the Air India passenger for the atrocity on an elderly passenger.
Delhi police said it had registered an FIR, based on the complaint by the victim to Air India, and formed several teams to arrest the accused. While the identity of the accused has not been disclosed by either the airline or the police, sources said he was in his 50s and a resident of Mumbai.
A senior Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) official said the regulator was “seeking a report from the airline and shall take action against those found negligent”.
The drunk man allegedly urinated on the co-passenger, a woman in her seventies, in the business class of the Air India New York-Delhi flight on November 26 last year.
The woman complained to the crew and told them her clothes, shoes and bag were soaked in urine.
The crew allegedly gave her a set of pyjamas and slippers and told her to return to her seat, claiming no other seat was available.
After the flight landed in Delhi, the passenger allegedly left without facing any action for his behaviour. Disappointed at the airline’s handling of the incident, the woman wrote to Air India chairman N. Chandrasekaran the next day describing what she called the “most traumatic flight I have ever experienced”.
“I am writing to express my deep disappointment regarding the appalling incident that occurred during my business class trip on flight AI102.... This has been the most traumatic flight that I have ever experienced. During the course of the flight, shortly after lunch was served and the lights were switched off, I was getting ready to sleep, and another passenger walked to my seat completely inebriated. He unzipped his pants, relieved himself, and continued to expose me to his private parts. The passenger sitting next to me asked him to return to his seat. He did not respond immediately, but after a few moments left the area,” she said in the letter.
The woman wrote that she didn’t want to sit on the soiled seat, so she was given a crew seat.
After an hour, she was allegedly told by the crew to return to her seat, which was covered with sheets but still reeking of urine.
When she firmly refused to take the same seat, she was given another crew seat, where she spent the remaining five hours of the flight.
An Air India spokesperson said the airline had taken a “very serious view of the incident, where a passenger behaved in an unacceptable and undignified manner on the New York-Delhi flight that caused extreme distress to a fellow passenger”.
