Air rage: does India have a growing problem?

In fact, recently there has been a spate of cases of unruly behaviour by Indian passengers on international flights operated by Indian airlines, with crews facing violent, dangerous and unpleasant behaviour, towards both themselves and other passengers, including incidents where the safety of the aircraft itself has been threatened.

However, the lack of official data on passenger misconduct on Indian airlines both domestically and internationally means it’s unclear whether cases of so-called ‘air rage’ are actually rising or if the increasing popularity of smartphones and social media means that shocking incidents on flights are instead becoming a staple of the news headlines.

For instance, in July, Sandeep Verma, a senior management official for Air India, was assaulted by an unruly passenger onboard a Sydney to New Delhi flight.
Verma had a business class reservation but this was downgraded to economy class as some of the business class seats were defective.

After moving to the economy section, Verma asked an unruly co-passenger, who was freely walking around in the aircraft’s galley and had also picked up a few liquor bottles, to behave himself, when the passenger turned violent. “The passenger slapped Verma and twisted his head and abused him,” an airline official stated. The official added that the unruly passenger was handed over to the security agency after the flight landed at the Delhi Airport. Following this, the passenger apologised in writing.

The aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), was informed about the incident.

In another incident, a video posted on social media showed a cabin crew member and a passenger yelling at one another over the available food choices for passengers on-board an IndiGo flight from Istanbul to Delhi in mid-December. The blazing row allegedly left other members of the cabin crew “crying”.

“You are pointing fingers at me and yelling at me,” the IndiGo air hostess tells the passenger in the nearly one-minute-long clip that was apparently shot by a passenger. “My crew is crying because of you. Please try to understand, there is a cart and counted meals... we can only serve what you ordered.”

The disgruntled passenger is heard shouting back “why are you yelling?”, to which the crew member responds “because you are yelling!”

Another crew member then holds the air hostess by the arms in an attempt to diffuse the situation.

The air hostess continues: “I am so sorry sir but you do not talk to the crew like that. I am peacefully listening to you with all due respect - but you have to respect the crew as well.”

The passenger tells the air hostess to “shut up. You are my servant”, to which the air hostess responds: “I'm sorry you cannot talk to me like that. I am an employee, I’m not your servant.”

IndiGo later stated the passenger had asked for a sandwich instead of the meal he had pre-booked and the crew told him that they would check if it was available. However, he began shouting and a member of staff began to cry.

The female crew member’s verbal response to the passenger struck a chord with many as the video went viral. Several social media users backed the cabin crew while urging flyers to be respectful of them. One commentator on X, formerly Twitter, said: “Hope IndiGo does not reprimand the crew here. Some passengers are obnoxious and it must have taken a lot for her to break down like this. She stood up for her fellow crew and she deserves only praise!”

Further incidents of air rage
The stories continue to pile up: In April, Delhi Police detained a 25-year-old man for misbehaving and assaulting crew on a London-bound Air India flight. The incident took place shortly after the plane took off from the Delhi International Airport.

The man, Jaskirat Singh Padda, who reportedly hails from Kapurthala in Punjab, was travelling with his parents. Police said an hour after take-off, he allegedly tried to open the emergency exit. When the cabin crew tried to stop him, he verbally abused them, and brutally punched one crew member, causing her to fall to the floor. He also grabbed another by her hair.

Singh had to be restrained with the help of other crew members and passengers, and the aircraft was brought back to Delhi about three hours after its departure.He was taken off the plane and detained by police. A case was subsequently opened against him for offences including assault, endangering life or the personal safety of others and relevant provisions of the Aircraft Rules, 1937.

In May, a drunk passenger was taken into custody for allegedly sexually assaulting an air hostess on a Dubai-Delhi flight. According to the police, the accused, Rajinder Singh, who hails from the village of Jalandhar in Punjab, got into a heated argument with the air hostess and allegedly molested her.
The air hostess brought the incident to the crew’s notice, who in turn informed the Amritsar airport control room. The assistant security manager of the airline lodged a police complaint, and Singh was arrested when the plane landed in Amritsar.

Anjali Mishra, who has worked for a couple of India’s low-cost carriers as a flight attendant over the past seven years, says some passengers think that when they buy a flight ticket, they have bought the plane and the crew are primarily meant to serve them, when in fact the crew are trained with safety as the priority.  

She adds: “People do not hear about the 99 per cent of would-be confrontations that are resolved by flight attendants without an event, as we are trained to de-escalate conflict as aviation’s first responders on nearly every flight.”

Taruna Yadav (name changed to protect her identity), a crew member with a leading airline, said verbal abuse was common in her job. “Once on a flight, we had turbulence, and the rules require everyone to be seated and wearing their seat belts. However, one woman was drunk, and when I repeatedly asked her to follow the captain’s orders, she said, “F*** off.

“Also, tipsy passengers often think that the moment they press the call bell a genie will appear with a bottle of whiskey.”

Unsurprisingly, many of the unruly passengers who have hit the headlines had one thing in common: they had consumed too much alcohol.

Experts say that for many airplane passengers, flying can be a stressful and expensive experience – whether it be negotiating the dreaded security lines at airports, the possibility of a delayed flight or disruptions, anxiety, fear of flying and log periods of sitting in small, confined spaces at 35,000 feet. And when these circumstances blend with alcohol, it’s a recipe for aggression and violence.

“A person gets tipsy far more quickly in the air than on the ground,” say medical experts, adding, “alcohol acts much faster on the body due to dehydration and oxygen deprivation.”

Whatever the underlying causes, the problem of unruly passenger incidents – including non-compliance with crew members, verbal, physical and sexual abuse and intoxication – shows little signs of fading from air travel globally.

In June, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) released new analysis showing that reported unruly passenger incidents increased in 2022 compared to 2021. The IATA called for more states to take the necessary authority to prosecute passengers under Montreal Protocol 2014.

Latest figures show that there was one unruly incident reported for every 568 flights in 2022, up from one per 835 flights in 2021.

Although India is a signatory to Article 4 of the Montreal Protocol, 2014, to the Tokyo Convention, it is yet to ratify it.

However, in India, according to aviation protocol, any untoward incident must be reported by the commander of the flight – the captain – through the flight report immediately upon landing. It is then forwarded by the airline to the DGCA.

For lapses in reporting incidents of unruly passenger behaviour onboard aircraft, the aviation regulator has imposed several fines on Air India.

In January, the DGCA levied a fine of Rs 10 lakh on Air India for its failure to report two incidents on a flight from Paris to Delhi in December, which included a drunk passenger urinating on a seat as well as another smoking inside a lavatory.

The penalty was imposed on Air India “for not reporting the incident to DGCA and delaying in referring the matter to its Internal Committee,
which is a violation of applicable DGCA Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR),” the DGCA said in a press statement.

Earlier in the same month, the DGCA imposed a financial penalty of Rs 30 lakh on Air India and suspended the licence of the pilot-in-command of a New York-Delhi flight in which a man urinated on a co-passenger, a woman in her 70s, in the business class cabin. The incident took place on 26 November. The accused, allegedly a high-level financial services professional based in India, was reportedly allowed to walk off the plane without any consequences, but weeks later, action was initiated against him. In January this year, the accused man was arrested and Air India banned him from flying with the airline four months. He was also sacked by his employer.

Referring to the urination incident, DGCA said Air India’s conduct appeared to be “unprofessional”, and that prima facie, it seemed that provisions related to the handling of unruly passengers were not complied with.

The DGCA also slapped a fine of Rs 3 lakh on Air India’s director of in-flight services for failing to discharge her duties.

Air India told DGCA that they didn’t inform law enforcement agencies about the incident as soon as it happened because the woman had “rescinded the initial request for action”. However, in an internal email to Air India staff following worldwide media reports of the incident, Campbell Wilson, Air India’s CEO and managing director, said that when an incident “on our aircraft involves improper behaviour of such magnitude, we must report it to authorities at the earliest opportunity, even if we genuinely believe that the matter has been settled between the parties involved”.

In April, the DGCA issued an advisory note to airlines reiterating ways to deal with unruly behaviour by passengers. According to the advisory, there are provisions under the CAR that allow an airline to take action against a passenger that behaves in an inappropriate manner.

In its advisory, the DGCA also reminded airlines that the CAR lists the responsibilities of pilots, cabin crew members and director of inflight services. It stated it is important that all concerned take note of these duties and abide by them while dealing with passengers.

In May, Campbell Wilson said that Air India needed to take a strong line on unruly passenger behaviour on-board aircraft. He said that unruly passengers are an international airline industry problem, and it is clearly not helpful when these kind of incidents happen. His remarks came soon after a male passenger onboard an Air India flight from Goa to Delhi physically assaulted a crew member.

Campbell Wilson believes that airlines in India should have the power to ban an unruly passenger unilaterally, as in other countries, instead of following a complicated process.

Meanwhile, since 2021, the DGCA has placed 166 passengers in the ‘no-fly list’, Union minister of state for civil aviation General V K Singh (Retd) told the Rajya Sabha in August.

The no-fly list is designed to enhance safety and prevent disorderly behaviour during air travel. It was introduced in 2017 with the aim of recognising passengers who engage in disruptive conduct and imposing temporary flight bans on them.

Meanwhile, IndiGo’s CEO Pieter Elbers said that while there appears to have been a rise in unruly passenger behaviour, such incidents are not limited to India but are a “global thing.” But he did praise the cabin crew of his airlines in how they deal with such tricky situations, adding,

Speaking at the opening of Goa’s new Manohar International Airport, he praised the actions of airline crew in dealing with and managing unruly passengers.

According to the Simple Flying news website, he said: “We train our crew for that, and I am proud of our cabin crew dealing with these situations. I think it is our job as management to support our crew and our staff in difficult situations, and in difficult times.”