Peegate
'We fell short': Tata Sons chairman expresses 'personal anguish' on Air India 'peeing' incident
Mumbai/IBNS: Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran on Sunday expressed “personal anguish” to the Air India “urination” incident, where a drunk man, Shankar Mishra, allegedly urinated on an elderly woman co-passenger.
His response came 44 days after public outrage and promises of action by authorities.
In a statement, Chandrasekaran admitted that Air India's response should have been much swifter. "We fell short of addressing this situation the way it should have been," he added.
"The incident on Air India flight Al102 on November 26th, 2022, has been a matter of personal anguish to me and my colleagues at Air India," he noted.
Chandrasekaran also said that “the Tata group and Air India stand by the safety and well-being of our passengers with full conviction.”
"We will review and repair every process to prevent or address any incidents of such unruly nature," the statement further read.
Meanwhile, Air India issued a show cause notice and de-rostered a pilot and four cabin crew members pending an investigation into the alleged urination incident which took place on November 26 in the business class of its New York-New Delhi flight.
Air India CEO Campbell Wilson, too, in his statement said that the airline could have handled the issue better and promised a robust reporting system for unruly behaviour and a system of reporting such incidents.
"Air India is deeply concerned about the in-flight instances where customers have suffered due to the condemnable acts of their co-passengers on our aircraft. We regret and are pained about these experiences," he said.
Further, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) issued notices to the officials and crew of the New York-Delhi flight, asking why action should not be taken against them for "dereliction" of duty while handling the November 26 'urination' incident.
Air India didn't complain to the police until last week, and filed an FIR with Delhi Police only after the victim’s letter to the group chairman of Air India, N Chandrasekaran, surfaced.
After the flight had landed in Delhi, to everyone's shock, Shankar Mishra was allowed to leave without any repercussions.
Following the FIR, Delhi Police launched a manhunt to nab Mishra who went absconding. He was, finally, arrested from Bengaluru by the Delhi Police and sent to judicial custody by a Delhi court on Saturday.
Reacting to the same, DGCA earlier issued notice to some officials of the Tata Group-owned airline, the pilot of the flight and the crew, asking them to reply within two weeks.
"... it emerges that provisions related to the handling of an unruly passenger on-board have not been complied with," the DGCA said in a statement.
After much hue and cry, Air India banned Mishra from taking its services for 30 days, pending a report from its Internal Committee.
This elicited outrage on social media as netizens felt the penalty fell gravely short of a fitting action that such an offence demanded.
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