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Journalism of Courage
Tejasvi Surya, national president of the BJP Yuva Morcha and the party’s MP from Bengaluru South, invited backlash from the Opposition Wednesday after it came to light that he had allegedly opened the emergency exit door of an IndiGo aircraft before takeoff, at the Chennai airport on December 10 last year. While media reports named Surya, IndiGo did not name anyone in its statement. Sources at the airline, however, confirmed to The Indian Express that it was Surya, who was travelling with BJP’s Tamil Nadu president K Annamalai. According to sources, Surya later wrote an apology to the airline.
The aircraft was reportedly taxiing for takeoff when the emergency exit door opened. As per protocol, the passengers were deboarded, and the aircraft took off only after a thorough inspection.
In light of the incident, take a look at other episodes on aircraft that made news recently.
Istanbul-Delhi IndiGo flight: A video went viral in December 2022 in which an IndiGo airhostess lost her cool and intervened after a passenger demonstrated unruly behaviour with another crew member apparently over the choice of meals offered to him. The situation quickly escalated when she retorted to the passenger’s yelling and said she was an employee and not his servant. Responding to the incident, IndiGo said the incident took place on flight 6E 12 from Istanbul to Delhi on December 16. “The issue was related to meals chosen by certain passengers traveling via a codeshare connection,” the airline said.
New York-New Delhi Air India flight: Air India lodged a police complaint against a passenger who allegedly urinated on a fellow woman passenger on a flight in November 2022, and also imposed a 30-day flying ban on him, the airline stated on January 4, 2023.
Air India lodged the complaint on December 28, 2022, more than a month after the incident.
The incident took place with a woman, a senior citizen, on board flight AI 102 between New York and New Delhi on November 26, 2022. According to the complainant, about a couple of hours into the flight, she was getting ready to sleep when an inebriated passenger walked to her seat and relieved himself on her. The woman complained to the cabin crew, who intervened by cleaning her seat and providing her with a change of clothes, but allegedly did not restrain the passenger or file a complaint. The passenger was later nabbed from Bengaluru and is in judicial custody. He was also sacked from his position at Wells Fargo.
Bangkok-India Thai Smile airways fight: A video clip of a fight that turned into a brawl on December 27 on a Bangkok-India flight went viral recently. The clip shows two men arguing and a flight attendant trying to defuse the situation in which one man was heard saying to the other to “put his hand down while talking”. Soon, the situation escalated as one of them was joined by his friends and they started slapping and beating the other passenger with whom the argument was happening.
Mumbai-Lucknow Indigo flight: In 2020, Indian stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra was barred from flying with IndiGO, Air India, SpiceJet and GoAir after he was heard mocking Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief of Republic Media Network, Arnab Goswami in an IndiGo flight. A video of the incident, posted by him on Twitter, went viral.
He claimed then that he had returned to his seat immediately after the air hostess requested him to, and caused no disturbance. In a statement, Kamra had said he had “politely asked” Goswami to have a conversation and later gave the news anchor “a monologue about what I felt about his journalism”.
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