BENGALURU: A frequent flyer got a nasty shock during a recent trip on an Air India flight from Bengaluru to New Delhi. Bengaluru-based entrepreneur Praveen Vijaysingh realised that the food served to him had a dead cockroach only after he had consumed the sambar served to him. What is worse is that when he raised his grievance with the purser (lead flight attendant), the latter asked him to eat it, calling it a curry leaf!
Air India has offered to reimburse the full ticket fare to the flyer to compensate for the bad experience, but he has refused to accept the offer.
The incident happened on August 22 onboard flight no. AI 513 which departed at 7.05 am from Kempegowda International Airport. Vijaysingh, co-founder of an IT and telecom firm, based at Sahkar Nagar in the city, told TNIE, “I am a strict vegetarian and requested for a vegetarian breakfast of idli, sambar and croissant. With idli, I took sambar and after noticing something unusual spat out the food. To my horror, I found a dead cockroach. I called for the flight purser and informed him. To my utter surprise, the purser insisted that it was not a cockroach but curry leaf and I should consume it.”
Later, he had to wait for two hours at T3 terminal after reaching New Delhi airport just to register his grievance. “First, I was served a dead cockroach and then I was forced to believe it’s a curry leaf. It’s not acceptable,” he added.
Asked about the incident, the airline said, “Air India has a zero-tolerance policy towards such lapses and we have taken stringent action against the caterer concerned and those responsible, to prevent such occurrences in future. We sincerely regret the incident and have extended our apology to the guest. This particular incident is an aberration from the highest standard of inflight services that Air India is committed to.”