DGCA issues advisory to airlines on unruly passengers

Days after two incidents of Air India passengers, reportedly in an inebriated state, urinating on co-flyers triggered massive outrage, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) Friday issued an advisory to the head of operations of all scheduled airlines with respect to handling unruly passengers on board, asking them to use “restraining devices” when all others options have been exhausted.

In a statement released, DGCA said, “Applying restraining devices should be used when all conciliatory approaches have been exhausted”.

“In the recent past, DGCA has noticed a few incidents of unruly behavior and inappropriate conduct by the passengers on board the aircraft during flight, wherein it is observed that post holders, pilots and cabin crew members have failed to take appropriate actions,” the aviation regulator added.

Non-action, inappropriate action, or omission by the airlines towards such incidents has tarnished the image of air travel in different segments of society, it said.

Earlier on Friday (Jan 6) , the DGCA sought a report from Tata Group-owned Air India on an incident of a drunk passenger allegedly urinating on the blanket of a female passenger on the airline’s Paris-New Delhi flight last month, which it did not report to the regulator. This was the second mid-air incident of a similar nature on an Air India flight in less than 10 days, as on November 26 last year, an inebriated man allegedly urinated on his female co-passenger in her seventies in the business class of the airline’s New York-New Delhi flight.

-B