Rules of conduct

On-board unruliness demands stronger policies

Three recent unedifying incidents involving Indians aboard international flights highlight the urgent need for the regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), and the airline industry to address the issue with greater vigour. In at least two incidents, the initial responses of the airline pointed to a general policy of tolerance. In the case of Air India, now owned by the Tata group, an inebriated passenger in business class got away scot-free after urinating on a female co-passenger. It took a complaint by the passenger to Tata Group Chairman N Chandrasekaran to galvanise the airline into action by putting the passenger on a no-fly list and lodging a police complaint. Although the DGCA has issued a show cause notice to Air India, it needs to act with greater vigour. A viral video of a passenger on an IndiGo flight making offensive comments to cabin crew after a misunderstanding over meal booking elicited an emollient statement from the management about giving top priority to “customer comfort”.

As for the mid-flight brawl on a Bangkok-Kolkata Smile Airways service, the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security issued a bald statement to the effect that it has “taken note” of the video clip recording the incident. The three incidents, all involving men, highlight extreme versions of a trend of general poor behaviour shading into outright bad manners routinely displayed by Indians towards staff in services industries such as hospitality, retail, and aviation. All customer-facing ground and cabin crew are trained to deal with a certain degree of poor behaviour. But low fares and acute competition in the aviation business may have encouraged airlines to be more lenient in their approach. These three incidents suggest greater toughness is urgently warranted to protect the dignity of their employees, especially women, and the interests of other passengers, and, most importantly, to ensure the safety of the aircraft.

The DGCA has declared unruly on-board behaviour a punishable offence and allows airlines to blacklist an offending passenger on a no-fly list for 30 days on a complaint filed by the pilot. These rules were put in place after a Member of Parliament (MP) assaulted a staffer of Air India (then government-owned) in 2017. But the prescribed procedures thereafter are so clunky and tilted in the passenger’s favour as to render them mostly useless. The internal committee has to comprise a retired district or sessions judge as chair, and a representative from a different airline and passenger or consumer associations. If this committee fails to take a decision within 30 days, the offending passenger can fly again. If the passenger is banned, he can appeal within 60 days to an appellate committee under the civil aviation ministry with roughly the same composition as the airline’s internal team. And, of course, this decision can be appealed in the high courts. Further, a blacklisted customer is banned only from the airline concerned. Other airlines can choose to sign on, as they did in the case of the MP.

Taken together, this elaborate procedure cannot be described as sufficiently responsive or punitive to encourage more Indians to behave better on flights, especially those on which liquor is served. To be sure, inculcating better behaviour in the average aspirational Indian is a challenging prospect but the aviation industry could do its bit. A brief video on basic aircraft courtesy and rules ahead of a flight, for instance, would not go amiss.