[McLaren Rulez]

Originally Posted by volkman10

Tata Group Chairman issues first statement on Air India peeing incident,

Total non-apology apology written by some mid-level PR guy.

There's no mention of compensation for the woman or a direct apology to her nor is there any concrete action such as a flight ban for Mr. Incontinent. There is zero chance these guys will ever be able to compete with top airlines like SQ or Emirates when they run their org like this.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by no_fear

Why is it the pilot's call? Isn't this something that the chief purser can decide? Surely a senior flight attendant can look up available seats and move the passenger.

Is there a different protocol followed by AI?

This seems to be either an AI policy or a dictact by that particular Captain. It is certainly not a DGCA rule or any rule from Ministry of Civil Aviation. Take a hypothetical example that a seat got defective and the pax for safety needs another seat. Would they wait for an inordinate time parking the pax on a jump seat waiting for the Captain to make himself available? While I do not wish to paint all AI staffers with the same brush as that would be grossly unfair the Captain and the senior person in-charge of the cabin certainly were not applying their minds that day. On an American airline that offender would have been handcuffed. Duct tapes and strong plastic are wires normally available for such exigencies. Maybe the crew found it easier to coax or push a scared quiet traumatized old lady than take action against the offender.

[Cyborg]

Originally Posted by no_fear

@Cyborg @V. Narayan,

As per media reports, it seems that the captain is being blamed for not stepping up and allowing the distressed passenger to move her from business class to first class.

Why is it the pilot's call? Isn't this something that the chief purser can decide? Surely a senior flight attendant can look up available seats and move the passenger.

Is there a different protocol followed by AI?

Normally, I repeat under normal circumstances any upgrade decision has to come from the Commander, the Cabin Supervisor is not someone who can take this call.

As I said above, normally, that’s the reason I said in one of my posts on this thread that this is a really confusing and strange situation. There should be more than meets the eye in this situation because this is an extreme case where the resolution after the fact was straightforward.

All that was needed to be done was the Cabin Supervisor immediately (unless there was some sort of flight system emergency which takes precedence for the Commander) informs the Commander about the incident who would or should have instructed the Supervisor to immediately move the distressed lady to First Class, speak to her, apologise for what has happened and help her in every way possible and ensure she is being spoken to and comforted for the remainder of the flight.

The Commander should have in turn informed ground services before landing where there should have been special handling waiting for the lady and assist her with whatever she needs, the jerk to be arrested and charged for what he has done.

This should have been a textbook operation, why this was not done really beats me. Maybe there will be some light on this in the coming days.

Dear Mr. Narayan - in this case there would be no need for the duct tape or handcuffs because the jerk was not displaying or showing any violent tendency. In fact I believe he was subdued and scared with what he had done and thinking what would happen to him now.

Cheers

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by Cyborg

Audioholic, agree you felt discriminated against but allow me to explain the situation (maybe)
The Commander of the flight is the boss while the aircraft is operational

Sometimes Commercially Important People (CIP) to the airline are taking a flight where they are not to be upgraded

Please try and understand, it’s like say an office on ground

Think of an aircraft as an office

Appreciate the time you have taken to clarify the points I raised. I totally understand having someone on board the flight who is commercially important, VIP, captains wife or whatever. And I also am okay with things like bumping up your friend into business or first or whatever. While all that is passable, what is not is when the regular pax is devoid of basic services, while your CIP gets treated otherwise. For example, during this same flight, there was a funny moment when no one was offered anything to drink be it a juice or alcohol just a regular meal tray and a bottle of water. However, almost everyone in the flight raised their head up when they heard these CIPs opening up coke and beer cans and everyone were wondering where this hissing sound came from

I would not even complain about that stuff but since this point of crew not responding correctly in this situation came up, I just wondered if this guy who got so much to drink and even after committing such an act was still allowed to enjoy the comfort of his seat while the lady had to suffer also was some CIP as you say.
Unfortunately while you really tried to explain things to your best extent possible, I have been in three AI international flights so far amongst 40+ intl flights over the last few years and I have seen everything that would convince me to never fly AI again. In those three flights I have seen altercations between pax, senior cabin crew abusing juniors to the extent of them crying in the galley, broken seats, non working IFE, uncleaned interiors, crew chewing tobacco in flight and what not. The below video brings to light in the doctors words, how the junior crew tried to help the lady but the seniors showed the usual sarkari attitude.

Originally Posted by volkman10

Horrific account by a co-passenger on Air India Flight AI 102


https://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=dOHS...nnel=MOJOSTORY

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

This seems to be either an AI policy or a dictact by that particular Captain. It is certainly not a DGCA rule or any rule from Ministry of Civil Aviation. Take a hypothetical example that a seat got defective and the pax for safety needs another seat. On an American airline that offender would have been handcuffed..

Just out of curiosity, even if it's an AI specific thing why is the captain even supposed to decide such things like seating arrangement or swapping of seats? Isn't the cabin crew a better choice to decide such things especially when the captain would have greater responsibilities and actions to do?

[Cyborg]

Originally Posted by audioholic

Just out of curiosity, even if it's an AI specific thing why is the captain even supposed to decide such things like seating arrangement or swapping of seats? Isn't the cabin crew a better choice to decide such things especially when the captain would have greater responsibilities and actions to do?

What you said about feeling discriminated against in these circumstances is justified. Stupid also on the part of the crew to be so blatant about what they did.

Please see my post above about how this situation should have been handled, we posted 4 minutes apart

General airline rules:
Swapping seats or exchanges within the same cabin class normally or otherwise is no big deal. Class upgrades, economy to business or first has to have clearance from the Commander or there would be no control on what’s happening. It’s to maintain sanctity class wise or people who have paid higher fares would complain on why someone has been upgraded.

Even airline crew who travel subject to load (meaning seat availability) are explicitly instructed to always be dressed in formal attire (no shorts or slippers) so if the need arises and they have to be upgraded they would fit in a higher cabin.

Cheers

[SR-71]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

On an American airline that offender would have been handcuffed.

On a lighter note, US based airline crew are on a different plane all together when it comes to empathizing with people. They are known to offload even specially abled children citing they are a risk to co passengers. In this case they might have thrown the drunk passenger off the flight midair if that was possible .

Someone mentioned Indians are the worst flyers. IMHO Indians (am sorry to generalize here) are worst fellow passengers to travel with irrespective of the mode of transportation. The year before the pandemic kicked in I had to fly quiet frequently to US. I skipped my regular choices and used the biweekly service by KLM from Bangalore if I had to travel to the east coast. This despite KLM service being okish and the timing being unfavorable (it was flying out only on Tuesday/Thursday). But on the bright side it had relatively lower desi passenger density on BLR-AMS sector and almost zero on the AMS-JFK/DTW one. The entire route had newer A350s and boring old passengers which made it a quieter fly.

[TROOPER]

Originally Posted by Cyborg

In my opinion AI deserves a 21 gun salute for the above.

Nothing out of the ordinary. RBI has similar medical assistance. LIC's medi-claim cover for the employee and their family would make you raise your eyebrows. Standard govt organization stuff.

I've heard enough stories from my brother who works in the field, seen enough people who worked/work for Air India to feel the way the pax was treated was just due to a lack of fear of consequences. That's the reason Air India is where it is today. No one could have predicted the peeing incident. What happened after that was 100% in the hands of the captain and crew. Frankly, they should be kicked off from their jobs. People are let off for far less. Anyone feeling otherwise needs to seriously consider what the senior woman went through, especially mentally post that incident.

And if anyone wonders whether Tata can turn things around wrt customer service since they run TAJ, don't forget they also run Tata Motors. It can go either ways. That's why I don't trust that PR statement one bit.

[gomzi]

Originally Posted by Cyborg

All that was needed to be done was the Cabin Supervisor immediately (unless there was some sort of flight system emergency which takes precedence for the Commander) informs the Commander about the incident who would or should have instructed the Supervisor to immediately move the distressed lady to First Class, speak to her, apologise for what has happened and help her in every way possible and ensure she is being spoken to and comforted for the remainder of the flight.

The Commander should have in turn informed ground services before landing where there should have been special handling waiting for the lady and assist her with whatever she needs, the jerk to be arrested and charged for what he has done.

This should have been a textbook operation, why this was not done really beats me. Maybe there will be some light on this in the coming days.

This is exactly what should've happend, and since the passenger was having so many drinks, a more watchful eye kept on him. That the victim didn't receive any immediate response is just pathetic.

Originally Posted by SR-71

Someone mentioned Indians are the worst flyers. IMHO Indians (am sorry to generalize here) are worst fellow passengers to travel with irrespective of the mode of transportation.

I agree to a large extent with your statement. It might be due to a social behaviour where people focus only on themselves/their "group" and ignore any inconvenience caused to others around - whether they're Indians or not. At home this comes out in various ways as littering, breaking traffic rules etc. Just not caring.

Whether its a bus/boat tour group or an international flight, any time theres a large group of Indians traveling together, we try to steer clear, unfortunately.

I've experienced multiple times large groups just drowning out the tour guide with their chatter, like why did you guys come on the tour at all then?
I've also seen many Indians barely able to walk at the airport (mostly European airports) to catching their connecting flight because they got so drunk on their flight. I've not noticed

[Rodie09]

This whole pee gate incident is such an unfortunate thing to happen in the 2022 world, and that too in the supposedly well cultured, educated and civilized (supposedly) strata of the society. It reflects on many evils of the society in a single incident -

Ill effects of alcohol - Does not matter which part of world, which economic strata, it's common to see alcohol being the root cause of many disasters and people's lives getting affected for ever. I don't know what is the solution to this but the problem is very clear.

General apathy of bystanders - Forget the crew or AirIndia/Tata in general, I am baffled to see that how come no one made this incident public (of course with privacy factors intact) through any social channel. In today's day and age it is unbelievable that it took 2 months for this to come into news.

Failure of procedures and lack of human factor on part of AI - Already a lot has been said here.

Breach of privacy and it's unimaginable effects:
Sorry for being the devil's advocate here, and I in no way want to defend the accused here. If he has done what is being said, it is the most disgusting act I have ever come across in a situation where one would least expect. He deserves to be given the harshest of punishments in that case. However, somewhere I have sympathies for his family - wife, child, parents. Can't even imagine what kind of trauma they must be going through right now and their shattered mental state - everything build over lifetime crashing down in minutes. No one should ever go through such an ordeal.
This could have been better handled and the privacy of accused and family should have been respected. Something should have been worked out without making this a public show in front of entire world.

[Gupts007]

The incident is unfathomable. It is a pity it happened in our country. Indians as passengers on airplanes don't enjoy a very good reputation as is. There is a certain level of decorum and mannerisms that are expected to be upheld by travelers and that is where a lot of us fail due to lack of education, arrogance and sense of entitlement.

This unfortunate incident happened on 26th Nov and all the ruckus has been created almost 4 weeks later. I just can't imagine why. The media in India is like a cheap detective agency. They will keep posting frivolous and totally nonsensical views and connections trying to sensationalize the issue at hand instead of telling the truth.

What I think will come out of all this is, is that serving alcohol is bad and we should stop serving alcohol on the flights. This is the worst possible deduction from this episode. Peeing on a co passenger has probably happened first time ever in the history of air travel. Instead of tightening their crew and improving their training, they will find the easy way out. Like the SC banned use of tints. A blanket ban for everyone due to the impropriety of a selected few.

[SuperGirl_Dad]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

This seems to be either an AI policy or a dictact by that particular Captain. It is certainly not a DGCA rule or any rule from Ministry of Civil Aviation.

I distinctly remember on an ATR 72 Indigo flight in 2019, many seats were empty on the back of the cabin and 6 people were asked by the Cabin crew to move to the back for balancing aircraft center of gravity. They said its instruction from the captain to make the passengers move. Is this a possible reason why captain has to be make this decision for seat changing? But ATR 71 is a turboprop small airplane compared to the B777. Would love to know more on this.

[invidious]

There was this guy sitting next to me before taking off on the Bkk-BOM sector a few years ago, with four glasses of whisky on the tray. Unless they ration the alcohol, this is a recipe for disaster.

[Gupts007]

Originally Posted by invidious

There was this guy sitting next to me before taking off on the Bkk-BOM sector a few years ago, with four glasses of whisky on the tray. Unless they ration the alcohol, this is a recipe for disaster.

In the economy class they usually don't serve you more than 2 drinks all up. Particularly if you are flying one of these SE Asia airlines - Thai and Malaysian. European airlines are a bit more flexible. So in today's scenario it would be nearly impossible to have 4 drinks sitting in front of you!

[VNair]

There should be some strict rules regarding alcohol in flights. I remember on a flight from Dubai to Cochin, a passenger started drinking from his own bottle, when the crew refused to serve more liquor as he was already high. Now since they serve alcohol even in domestic terminals of major airports, there has to be some stringent rules regarding the limits.

[sagarpadaki]

Originally Posted by invidious

There was this guy sitting next to me before taking off on the Bkk-BOM sector a few years ago, with four glasses of whisky on the tray. Unless they ration the alcohol, this is a recipe for disaster.

Curious to know how food and beverage are served before take off. Which airline is this?