Repentance of a similar act was seen at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi. A passenger was arrested for urinating in public. The incident took place on Friday, the 8th of January. He seemed to be drunk and was abusing other passengers around him. Another similar incident took place on a flight a few days earlier.

Act of shame at Airports

The first major incident happened on 26th November when a drunken passenger urinated on the blanket of another old lady passenger. The incident took place in the business sitting class of a flight. The flight was AI 102 which was flying from New York to New Delhi. 

Following the incident, one pilot and four cabin crew members have been issued show cause notice. And an internal inquiry was also initiated. Many things came to light after all this such as service of alcohol, incident handling, complaint registration, grievance cell, etc.

The accused man was arrested from Bengaluru after escaping for several days. After his arrest, The company in which he works terminated his service and later fired him. 

Responding to the incident, Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran said, The airline’s response should have been much swifter in the matter. He said it had been a matter of personal anguish to him and his colleagues at the airline.

The victim woman wrote to Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran expressing her horrific experience and claimed that the crew member was not in the mood of taking the action effectively. 

Air India also imposed a 30 days travel ban on the accused man.

Decency is no more at Airports on Flights

A few days after the November 26 incident, Two separate but similar instances of passenger misbehavior onboard a Paris-New Delhi flight takes place. A drunk passenger had reportedly urinated on the vacant seat and blanket of a woman passenger.

In another incident in which a man was caught smoking in the lavatory, not responding to the instructions of the cabin crew.

These matters themselves are very serious and morphed but following the incidents, the action of the cabin crew is also a matter of serious concern.

The woman who suffered the bad incident on 26 November said that the cabin crew was trying to dismantle the situation, was unprofessional, and made me sit with the accused passenger.

All these incidents have one thing in common which is the consumption of alcohol which took place at airports and on flights.

A 2022 study by the medical journal Lancet reveals that there has been an effective increase in alcohol consumption in India over the last three decades. 

The research and analysis by Lancet showed consumption of Liquor was the highest among men in the age group of 40-64 years, in which alcohol consumption alone has increased by 5.63% since 1990, followed by the 15-39 age group with a jump of 5.24%. For the elderly, consumption has increased by 2.88%, according to the report.