CHENNAI: Dear, Mr Passenger. Do Watch your behaviour, If you’d like to enjoy flying with us. Dhanya-waad! Indian airline operators should probably just throw this line into their hostess’ pre-flight retinue, right after the instructions about seatbelt signs. Airline staff are increasingly getting tougher on instances of misbehaviour by passengers on domestic flights, especially in the timeframe before a plane actually takes off.
An incident that occurred at the Chennai Airport last week is a classic example. “All the passengers had boarded an Indigo flight to Delhi and were preparing to depart, when one passenger asked for some particular refreshment. The flight attendants told him to wait and moved on, but he kept asking for it and raised his voice each time,” said a senior AAI official. “By this time, the plane was queuing up for take off and all the clearances had been given. But when the air hostesses couldn’t pacify the yelling gent, they informed the pilot, who immediately took a call to return to the bay and offload the passenger. There weren’t any abusive words exchanged this time, but the pilot didn’t want any further trouble on his watch,” he added. The plane departed, but the passenger and the airline staff sat with the airport authorities and sorted the issue out. No formal complaint was registered.
After that period of time when airline staff were trained to take any amount of flak from passengers, owing to the dipping fortunes of the aviation industry, pilots and flight attendants have become sterner now. “A passenger being upset about not getting a service he was promised is understandable. But yelling and abusing service staff and disturbing other passengers in a closed environment like a plane can be dangerous. This would not be tolerated on international airlines and I don’t think we should either,” said a senior management official with Jet Airways.
In the recent past, instances where passengers have staged dharnas and abused pilots in planes en masse may have worked in their favour, but individual dissidents often find the going tough, “The DGCA has a set of regulations for all flight personnel to assess the behaviour of passengers before the plane takes off and spot the ones that may cause trouble. The markers for people who are stressed, upset or problematic are quite well defined and most airline staff are well equipped to pick on them and report it to the pilot,” said an Air India pilot. “So, we’re not caught unawares when a full blown scene is playing out in the aisle.”
One of the reasons why pilots and airlines were dead against re-routing or landing a plane to offload an obnoxious passenger is because of the massive expenses involved —ATF, landing and parking, time factor. Some of these have now been rationalised as necessary in the face of extremely angry passengers, “There is so much stress these days that passengers need to blow off steam. We give them that much. But if they misbehave or abuse my crew then I’ll jolly well boot them out and personally send the report to the company,” concluded a Jet Airways senior pilot. So, think twice before you snap at your flight attendant!
