At least Southwest has fantastic employees to make up for its incompetent managers; Air India, not so much
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The unfriendly skies on the road to Bombay
“Shankar Mishra, a vice president for [Wells Fargo’s] office in Mumbai, was on a flight from New York to New Delhi on Nov. 26, when he reportedly had a little too much to drink. The 72-year-old woman in a seat near him said that Mishra unzipped his pants and urinated on her.
“During the course of the flight, shortly after lunch was served and the lights were switched off, a male business class passenger seated in 8A walked to my seat, completely inebriated,” the woman stated in her complaint to Air India. “He unzipped his pants and urinated on me and kept standing there until the person sitting next to me tapped him and told him to go back to his seat, at which point he staggered back to his seat.”
She went on to say that the airline offered her crew pajamas to change into but told her that there were no seats available for her to move. She claimed she sat in a flight attendant’s jump seat for about an hour before the crew asked her to return to her seat. Although the crew had put a sheet over the seat, the woman said that the seat was still wet and smelled of urine.
When the flight crew told the woman that Mishra wanted to apologize to her, she said that all she wanted to do was ensure that police arrested him when the plane landed in India. The crew had other plans, according to her account:”
However, the crew brought the offender before me against my wishes, and we were made to sit opposite each other in the crew seats. I was stunned when he started crying and profusely apologizing to me, begging me not to lodge a complaint against him because he is a family man and did not want his wife and child to be affected by this incident. In my already distraught state, I was further disoriented by being made to confront and negotiate with the perpetrator of the horrific incident in close quarters. I told him that his actions were inexcusable, but in the face of his pleading and begging in front of me, and my own shock and trauma, I found it difficult to insist on his arrest or to press charges against him.
“Both Air India and Wells Fargo have undertaken disciplinary measures as a result of the incident.
“Air India has de-rostered four flight crew members and a pilot as a result and announced an internal investigation,” Deutsche Welle reports. “Mishra has been fired by his employer, with Wells Fargo calling the incident ‘deeply disturbing’ on Friday.”
*February 12, 1996: Greenwich investment banker who defecated on plane pleads guilty
NEW YORK (AP) _ An investment banker accused of defecating on a airliner’s food-service cart during a flight pleaded guilty today to a misdemeanor charge of threatening a flight attendant and agreed to pay $50,000 in restitution. His lawyer said his only problem was diarrhea. [I’d say that wasn’t his only problem, but … —ED]
``I was angry,″ [XXX], 52, told Magistrate Judge Steven M. Gold as he admitted making the threat aboard a United Airlines flight from Buenos Aires to New York on Oct. 20.
[XXX] a managing director at the Trust Company of the West who lives in upscale Greenwich, Conn., faces up to six months in jail and a $5,000 fine when he is sentenced May 14
(Geeze, the incident even has its own Wikipedia page)
During the flight … a Wall Street investment banker, had been refused further alcoholic beverages when cabin crew determined he was intoxicated. After they thwarted his attempt to pour himself more, [he] threatened one flight attendant with violence and attacked another one. He then went into the first-class compartment, which was also carrying Portuguese president Mário Soares and Argentinian foreign minister Guido di Tella and their security details. There, he climbed on a service trolley and defecated, using linen napkins to wipe himself, and later tracked and smeared his feces around the cabin.[1]
Food service was canceled due to the unsanitary conditions and the crew sprayed perfume all over the cabin instead to suppress the smell of the feces. The pilots tried to divert to Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but were refused since the presence of foreign dignitaries on board created a security risk.
(Now back to Air India: It gets (far) worse:)
I had only read the summary of this incident when I originally posted this. I clicked on the link to the actual complaint letter sent to Air India, and whoo boy.
