Peeing case: Tata Group head finally reacts, admits AI was slow to respond
Reacting more than 40 days after a drunk male passenger urinated on an elderly female co-passenger and flashed at her on an Air India flight, Tata Group chairman N Chandrasekaran admitted on Sunday that Air India’s response should have been “much swifter”.
In the meantime, the accused man has been arrested and remanded in 14-day judicial custody, and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has rapped the Tata Group-owned airline for “unprofessional” conduct.
Incident on Air India flight AI102 on 26 Nov 2022, has been a matter of personal anguish to me&my colleagues at Air India. Air India’s response should've been much swifter. We fell short of addressing this situation the way it should've been: N Chandrasekaran, Chairman, Tata Sons pic.twitter.com/CW8SP6JDYM
— ANI (@ANI) January 8, 2023
“The incident on Air India flight AI102 on November 26, 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,” Chandrasekaran said in the long-awaited statement.
Flight Insight | Pee-gate: Air India’s response is too late, too little
He added, “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.”
“Insensitive cabin crew”
The incident itself came to light in the first week of January, after the septuagenarian female passenger wrote to Chandrasekharan. She complained about the incident that took place in the business class of the flight, alleging that the cabin crew was highly insensitive to the situation and did not take any action against the culprit.
According to the complaint, the man walked to her seat, unzipped his pants, and urinated on her. He was completely drunk and continued to expose his private parts. The man moved only when another passenger told him to leave. The woman’s clothes, shoes, and bag were soaked in urine, and the cabin crew reportedly gave her a set of fresh clothes.
The airline later clamped a 30-day ban on the accused, and that was where its action in the matter ended.
Action so far
Since then, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has issued show-cause notices to the airline, its director of in-flight services, and the crew that operated the New York-Delhi flight. The regulator said Air India’s conduct in handling the incident was “unprofessional.”
Acting on the woman’s complaint, Delhi Police arrested the Mumbai-based accused, Shankar Mishra, from Bengaluru on Saturday. Even before that, on Friday, Wells Fargo sacked Mishra, who was the US-based financial services firm’s India vice-president.
Air India CEO Campbell Wilson has said four cabin crew members and one pilot have been de-rostered. He has also acknowledged that Air India could have handled the recent cases of unruly passengers better.
Even as the airline faced flak for the November incident, another similar incident was reported from a Paris-Delhi flight. This incident allegedly happened on December 6. A drunk male passenger allegedly urinated on the blanket of a female passenger but charges were not pressed after he gave a written apology.
(With agency inputs)
