'Crewed' lessons

On-board incidents point to poor training

For the Indian aviation industry, 2022-23 is looking like a year of soaring growth with the number of passengers set to overtake the pre-Covid year of 2019-20. This encouraging news has been leavened by frustratingly long lines at airports, near misses in the air, and mishaps from poorly maintained aircraft that resulted in the grounding of several of them by the aviation regulator. All of this pointed to growing safety risks in the air that have concentrated the minds of airlines, the ministry, and the regulator. Several on-board incidents over the past month, however, have highlighted a less acknowledged risk to flight safety: The inadequate training of ground and cabin crew. Three incidents in succession — two incidents of inebriated passengers (both men) urinating on co-passengers (both women) on board Air India international flights and a Go First flight taking off without 55 passengers on a Bengaluru-Delhi flight — emphasise the point. All these incidents have attracted their share of incredulous hilarity on social media but, in fact, they represent in different ways serious flight hazards too.
 

Much opprobrium has been heaped on the Tata group, including by the government, for the way the crew sought to cover up the incidents. But Air India was acquired by the group only in April last year and likely retained a large complement of employees from its public-sector days that is yet to fully imbibe private-sector service values. It is possible, therefore, that the air crew may well have been following previous standard operating procedures of dealing with drunken passengers. As one of the cases wends its way through the legal process, the extent of the on-board bungling is becoming clear. Rather than handing over the offender to airport security, which they would be well within their rights to do, given the Directorate General of Civil Aviation guidelines on unruly on-board behaviour — and inebriation is right up there — the cabin crew sought to “manage” the crisis without reporting it. Second, where overseas airlines are taught to handle and spot inebriated passengers, the Air India crew continued to ply them with alcohol.
 

Beyond misbehaving with co-passengers, the scope for creating a dangerous disturbance from drunk passengers on board remains a real risk. Finally, to force a traumatised victim and drunken offender to negotiate straightaway points to a complete absence of social sensitisation. Making the victim sit on a jump seat rather than offering to shift from the offending area also reflects poor management. Go First’s leave-behind blunder could have had even more dangerous repercussions. The reason airlines have two lists — a load sheet and a trim sheet — is to ensure that all passengers and bags are accounted for. This is a safety requirement to ensure that no unaccompanied hazardous baggage has been loaded and to evenly distribute the weight to optimise aircraft performance. There are also ticket scanners at the terminal gates and on the tarmac that enable coordination of passenger boarding. So though the fourth bus from the terminal reached the aircraft before the 55 passengers on the third bus, it is unclear how the pilot signed off on the roster. Go First’s apology declared it an “inadvertent oversight” in reconciliation. And Air India’s chief executive officer has promised a more robust reporting system. At the very least, both incidents should immediately qualify as case studies in training programmes for ground and cabin crew.