E-Paper
Not the first unruly passenger, certainly not the last
Former cabin crew members speak about harrowing experiences dealing with in-flight misbehaviour, after the recent AI fiasco with a passenger who relieved himself on a senior passenger
Strap: Following recent urinating incidents, former cabin crew members and experts talk about their experiences in dealing with unruly passengers; why tighter laws are required and the need to empower flight attendants
Fifteen years of serving as cabin crew on various carriers, including Air India, with which he worked for a year, and Malcolm Watcha was lucky enough to never have encountered an out-of-control passenger. But his stories would still make your head turn. “One man, who was a regular on Business Class, would never flush the toilet. He would also stick his leg out to trip crew members”.
Watcha, however, says he is grateful that he’s never had to deal with anything along the lines of the urinating incidents that have made headlines in the last few days.
The first one reportedly took place on November 26, when an inebriated passenger in Business Class on AI 102 from New York to New Delhi, urinated on a woman seated behind him. On January 7, the accused, Shankar Mishra, was sentenced to a 14-day judicial remand by a Delhi court.
Just 10 days after this incident, another inebriated male passenger reportedly urinated on a female co-passenger’s blanket on the Paris-Delhi sector -- no penal action was taken ostensibly as the man issued a written apology.
“This behaviour is absolutely unacceptable,” says Watcha, 59, of these incidents, which he believes are symptomatic of how much airline travel and the culture around it has changed over the decades.
Lenient laws?
Aviation history enthusiast Debasish Chakraverty agrees. “New recruits are casual and when it comes to customer service, they lack what their predecessors had,” says Chakraverty, “Nowadays, unruly behaviour on flights is almost a part of modern culture – one reason for this may be compared to the West, such passengers get off lightly here. Law enforcement must shoulder some of the blame,” says Chakraverty.
However, Roxanne Khodaiji, who worked as cabin crew for 14 years, says this is nothing new. “A similar incident took place in the 1990s. We were about to land – a passenger was screaming hysterically. I went down the aisle to check and found a passenger in one of the middle seats had his zipper down and was peeing all over the place. He had so much to drink that he had passed out and the passenger in the window seat had no way to escape the spray. Even my sari got sprayed,” says Khodaiji, who put a blanket on the man to keep everyone from being sprayed.
Khodaiji remembers the occasional passenger consuming more alcohol than he could handle, “and while crew has the right to refuse passengers, you cannot imagine how angry people get if you deny them alcohol. We have often seen passengers drink so much that they had to be wheeled out as they were unable to walk.”
Not just Indians
These incidents are not unique to India. In 2011, actor Gerard Depardieu urinated on the carpet of an Air France plane in front of passengers when cabin crew asked him to wait 15 minutes to use the restrooms. More recently, in October, 2022, a passenger on a British Airways plane from London to Nigeria defecated on the floor and then smeared faeces on himself and around the cabin.
Still, the level of disrespect flight attendants experience in India appears to be more pronounced.
Pearly Dastur, 62, retired from service four years ago. She remembers “having the worst experience of her life as a supervisor on an Air India flight just shortly before her retirement.” The incident she recalls had also made headlines.
The female passenger, at the centre of Dastur’s story, was fine till she was caught smoking in the restroom. “Then she insisted on drinking wine but wanted it in a screw-on bottle. And what we didn’t realise was that she was on drugs,” says Dastur. The woman twisted Dastur’s arm and even spat on her face.
“She terrorised the Business Class passengers,” and, according to a report published in The Jewish Chronicle, the Irish woman did all this while screaming out that she was “an international criminal lawyer for the f****** Palestinian people.”
Restrain them?
Dastur had to seek her colleagues’ assistance to control the passenger. “We stuck to protocol; I read her a warning letter and so on…ultimately, when we landed, it took four people to tie her up,” says Dastur, pointing out that while rules call to restrain such passengers, it’s easier said than done.
On another occasion, Dastur recalls how a big-built African-origin man suddenly turned aggressive mid-air because he had not taken his medicines. “He was very polite at first but he started flinging rubbish and food on one of my colleagues and became aggressive”.
Empower attendants
While it’s the flight attendants who must deal with such instances and often at great risk to their person, they aren’t necessarily empowered with the autonomy they need to tackle these situations.
Speaking to us on condition of anonymity, a former Air India steward says a lot of the old crew is completely demoralised by poor pay checks and it doesn’t help that they are required to fill in mounds of paperwork to justify their actions in such an event.
“Besides, even though I expect it’s the cabin crew who will face the backlash for the urinating incidents, in reality, they are not empowered to act in regard to restraining passengers or shifting seats,” he says.
“Those powers rest exclusively with those in the cockpit, and cabin crew has to get them to sign off on such things, hence the delay in taking these decisions,” says the steward.
Handcuffs on board
In comparison, a flight attendant who’s employed with an international carrier, tells us, “We follow a disruptive passenger guideline as per the CAA – first, you issue a verbal warning, next, you serve a notice, and if all else fails, we have handcuffs on board.”
In a case that requires the crew to move a passenger, the attendant tells us, “Of course, you’d give them another seat in a case like this and then you’d let the commander know that you did so – in my view, no commander in their right mind would say no. It’s humiliating for the passenger. Besides, if I take a decision and the commander disagrees with, then my manager can deal with that later,” says the attendant.
Cultural malaise
The retired Air India steward pointed out that these incidents also expose a deeper cultural malaise: the fact that passengers who are obnoxious on flights can pay off people and get away.
Chakraverty adds that the attitude of looking down on people, especially on flight attendants, also needs to change. “And, perhaps we need alcohol-free flights, just like smoking is no longer allowed on flights,” he adds.
Another retired AI flight attendant says that a systemic overhaul is required. “To work as attendants on an airline, a person’s appearances are prioritised, while on the craft, what matters is how compassionate you are, how gentle and tactful you can be and whether you have the people skills it takes to diffuse a potentially explosive situation…,” he says.
Khodaiji points out that the Irish woman, who was disruptive on the flight with Dastur, eventually ended her life as a result of the media reports and the trial around her behaviour.
“It’s also important to understand that people can do stupid things under the influence of alcohol; it doesn’t make them bad people – yet the humiliation in the aftermath is tremendous. It’s best for everyone if these incidents can be avoided”.
