It looks as if serpentine queues and sudden flight turn-backs due to technical snags are not the only inconveniences that air passengers need to put up with. Recent events have flagged risks from uncouth co-passenger behaviour. A video doing the rounds shows a bunch of passengers engaging in a mid-air version of a bar-room brawl on a Thai Airways flight.
Now there’s the appalling incident of an inebriated male passenger urinating on a 72-year-old woman on an Air India New-York-Delhi flight.With the authorities launching a belated investigation after the media furore, the full facts of the case are yet to come out. But media reports suggest that the airline’s cabin crew showed poor judgment in dealing with this incident on many counts. One, the pilot/cabin crew seem to have shown remarkable insensitivity in denying the distraught lady another seat after the incident, forcing her to return to her soiled seat, despite empty seats in the first-class section. Two, instead of restraining and dealing summarily with the misbehaving passenger, they seem to have tried to paper over the incident by getting the inebriated man to ‘apologise’ to the shell-shocked lady, adding to her trauma. Three, it is also unclear why the cabin crew continued to ply the passenger with alcohol after co-passengers reported that he was in a deeply inebriated state.
It is about time airlines stopped offering free-flowing alcohol as a big perk of international travel. This apart, much was made of how the Tata group was engineering a smart makeover of acquired Air India’s cabin crew — with grooming guidelines that went into great detail on the hairstyles, jewellery and make-up that the crew may sport. When screening and training cabin crew, it would be useful if airlines focussed less on looks and more on professional skills critical to passenger comfort — whether it is dealing with medical emergencies or passengers who engage in sexual harassment and uncouth behaviour mid-flight.