In another incident of unruly behaviour on air, a passenger was taken into custody on Sunday for allegedly urinating on a fellow passenger on a New York-New Delhi American Airlines flight in a “drunken” state. The incident happened on an American Airlines flight AA292, which took off from New York on Friday and landed at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport in New Delhi on Saturday, after a journey of nearly 14 hours.
The accused is reportedly a student in a United States university. “He was in a state of inebriation and urinated while he was asleep. It somehow leaked and fell on a fellow passenger who complained to the crew,” news agency PTI reported quoting a source at the airport.
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The victim, a male passenger, however was not keen on reporting the matter as the accused issued an apology and cited threats to his reputation and career. The airline, on its part, reported the matter to the Air Traffic Control (ATC) at the IGI airport, PTI said. The pilot reported the matter to the authorities who further alerted the CISF personnel. The accused was then handed over to Delhi police, who recorded statements of the concerned people in the matter.
The airline, issuing a statement in the matter, said it was handled “professionally” that the flight landed safely without any disruptions. “We’re grateful to our crew members who are consistently dedicated to the safety and care of our customers and handle the circumstances with the utmost professionalism,” it said.
Recently, reports of unruly passengers in drunken state aboard flights have gained a lot of spotlight with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) taking such incidents very seriously. In light of these incidents, on apprehensions about whether there would be any changes to the liquor policy on airlines, the minister of state for civil aviation VK Singh had said in February that that there was no such consideration.
Singh in a written response to a question in Rajya Sabha, had said that in the past year, a total of 63 ‘disruptive’ passengers were placed on the ‘No-Fly’ list by the aviation watchdog but of them only two incidents of ‘urinating’ had come to DGCA’s notice.
