Air India has come under heavy criticism in the last few weeks for the manner in which it handled an incident on one of its international flights, in which a 70-year-old woman complained that her male co-passenger had urinated on her in an inebriated condition. The former director of the airline, Jitendra Bhargava, also weighed in and said Air India had allowed a shoddy incident to snowball, and how it had handled the situation thereafter had raised numerous questions.
Bhargava, author of The Descent of Air India, said the airline needed to be seen taking appropriate action to redeem its public image. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation had slammed the Tata Group airline, saying its conduct was “unprofessional” and led to the “systematic failure” on the New York-Delhi flight incident on November 26, 2022, which it did not report to the aviation safety regulator.
In an article on Moneycontrol, Bhargava said the incident had stunned one and all because of its “deplorable nature” and the “alleged inaction of Air India”. Moreover, he said, it had taken place in the business class and concerned a woman, and a senior citizen at that.
“Even though the incident took place on November 26, 2022, and the aggrieved lady passenger had complained to chairman N Chandrasekhar the very next day, the action of filing a first information report (FIR) and constituting an internal committee was initiated only last week. Air India’s CEO & MD Campbell Wilson in a letter to employees on Thursday has said: ‘This week has, regrettably, been dominated by media headlines of which you are no doubt familiar. The repulsion felt by the affected passenger is totally understandable and we share her distress’,” he wrote.
The DGCA has said it will mull action after it received a report from Air India, but the Delhi Police summoned airline staff in connection with the incident. The accused Shankar Mishra, who was working with the US multinational firm Wells Fargo at a senior position in India, has been sacked from the job, the company said on Friday. A four-member Delhi Police team is now searching for him in Mumbai and Bengaluru.
Bhargava wrote: “I, as a former head of the inflight services department of Air India and, thus, aware of the reporting system on all untoward incidents, felt that there was a need to hear the other side too while wholeheartedly concurring with others that the act of urinating by a male passenger on a lady passenger was both condemnable and unpardonable.”
He said he reached out to the crew, which dismissed charges of being insensitive or failing to help. He wanted to understand what had transpired on the flight after the incident.
“The management would do well to conduct a detailed probe to identify not only the weaknesses in their response in this particular incident but to refine the training curriculum suitably,” he said.
On why the airline failed to alert security and let Mishra walk on arrival, the author said the crew said an “understanding” had been reached between the man and the woman. And this is where it all becomes complex.
The accused has claimed that he monetarily compensated the woman, but the woman said she had returned the money. Now, this is the point where the crew might have misunderstood the situation but the incident was mentioned in detail in the mandatory flight report submitted to authorities on arrival. From a legal perspective, Bhargava said, it can be questioned if a mutual agreement between two involved parties can absolve the airline from its set responsibilities.
But, he pointed out, delay in action or even inaction for four weeks after the incident was “difficult to fathom” despite the complaint being directed from the chairperson’s office. “The reasons for delay may not find many takers in the vitiated environment where the complainant can do no wrong and the airline can do nothing right. A senior airline functionary on conditions of anonymity said: we had been in touch with the aggrieved passenger and her representatives and it is grossly incorrect to allege that the airline has not reached her. The demand for compensation had been gradually increasing and a time had come when the negotiating management team said no more can be acceded and the action of filing an FIR was initiated. This explains the delay,” he wrote, adding that the sooner that this ugly incident was put to rest, the better for Air India.
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