A year ago, the Indian conglomerate Tata bought the traditional and largest airline in the country. Everything should get better. More than 400 million dollars are to be spent on aircraft equipment, service and comfort, it said in December. But two separate incidents within a few weeks of male passengers urinating on women on board have drawn the airline increasingly negative headlines.
The first incident occurred on November 26 on a flight from New York to Delhi. An apparently heavily intoxicated Indian manager at the major US bank Wells Fargo urinated on a 72-year-old passenger in business class. Her clothes, bag and shoes were hit. The passenger wrote a complaint because, in her view, the crew on the flight did not respond adequately to the incident. This allowed the manager to get out and go into hiding unhindered. The banker Shankar M. was then arrested by the police this Saturday, reports the AFP news agency.
According to reports in Indian media, another similar incident occurred on December 6th. An allegedly drunk passenger is said to have peed on the blanket of a passenger on a flight from Paris to Delhi. This time the pilot reported the incident to the destination airport. The man was initially arrested by security forces after landing. After an agreement with the passenger, he was allowed to leave later.
The first incident in particular is now becoming a problem for the airline’s reputation. The airline, which has belonged to the Star Alliance since 2014, only reacted with a long delay. For example, Lufthansa is also part of the alliance with 26 members. Passengers are offered a wide flight network with the opportunity to earn miles, and the airlines pursue high safety and service standards, according to the alliance.
Air India published a short critical statement this Sunday via the short message service Twitter from Natarajan Chandrasekaran, the chairman of the board of directors of the owner holding company Tata Son. It is a worrying matter for him and his colleagues at Air India, he said. The airline should have reacted more quickly. There was a failure to handle the situation as it should have been. Now all processes would be checked or changed.
The Indian manager is also known in Germany. In 2017/18 he agreed a joint venture with Thyssenkrupp for European steel activities. This then failed due to the veto of the EU Commission.
Air India boss Campbell Wilson already presented a catalog of measures in response to the pee incidents on Saturday. Four members of the crew and one pilot of the long-haul flight AI102 from the end of November were initially released. In-flight alcohol service procedures are now being reviewed and the incident reporting process is being switched from paper to computers and special software. In such incidents, the crew must intervene.
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