Train airline staff to be ‘civilised,’ says parliamentary committee

Asserts that salaries of the crew and ground staff come from the income earned from passengers

neha.tripathi@htlive.com

The panel pulled up Indigo airlines for an incident last year in which a passenger was manhandled (Reuters)

Taking cognisance of recent fights between passengers and airline staff, a parliamentary standing committee has emphasised the need for training employees of all airlines in soft skills training and functionality, stressing that crew members should be trained to be “more polite than saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’”.

Asserting that passengers expect civilised behaviour from the crew and ground staff as salaries come from the income earned from the passengers, the committee has asked the government to come up with a training programme for airline staff and the formulation of guidelines for training programmes to all the airlines at the earliest.

The committee said crew members should be trained in order to deal with situations like delayed departure and arrival of flights and diversions. It also said crew members must be sensitised to meet the needs of differently-abled passengers.

The committee said training in some cases exists only for the sake of it. It also pulled up Indigo airlines for a recent case in which a passenger was manhandled in Delhi by its ground staff. On October 15, Indigo’s ground staff were filmed dragging a passenger following an argument. The footage was shot by an airline employee, after which he was sacked. The video went viral after being reported in the media and had drawn the Directorate General of Civil Aviation’s (DGCA) and the civil aviation ministry’s attention. Indigo was not available for comment.

The committee said there have been many manhandling cases of late by both ground staff and crew members, some of which were reported by the media while a majority of incidents went unreported. Members said the behaviour of airline staff is often uncooperative. One of the members said the ground staff are worse than cabin crew and stated that the “attitude of airline staff is as if they are on some high ground and the passengers are like herds...”

A senior crew member from a leading airline said, “The ministers seem to be exaggerating the matter after the airlines put an end to VIP culture. Airlines fly thousands of passengers everyday and need to take care of utmost safety precautions. One has to understand that the individuals at the point of time handling an issue is an aberration. Locality plays an important role in such situations. All the crew members that are being spoken about are trained and DGCA-approved.”