We get a lot of fascinating airline news out of India, which makes it sound like flying one of their major carriers is akin to taking the Oregon Trail. From a Jet Airways plane dropping 5,000 feet, to both pilots on an Air India flight tricking the flight attendants into the cockpit so they could go nap in business class, to rats on a plane, there’s no shortage of stories.
One of my most knowledgeable industry readers is Sean M, who left the following comments a while back on one of the above posts:
Similar things happen more often than people realise, all over the world. It’s only news when the Indian press find out about it though.
While I was skeptical about that at first, I think we’ve finally found the story that proves this more than any other.
Via The Daily Mail:
A video of partying Air India staffers who allegedly kept passengers on a London-Delhi flight waiting for three hours has caused fresh trouble for the management of the airlines.
…
Flight AI-116 was diverted to Mumbai on the morning of December 17, 2013 because of poor visibility due to fog in Delhi.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner was to leave for Delhi at 9.30 am but took off only three hours later.
…
Mittal said the party was organized to celebrate an official’s promotion and that the two issues were being “mischievously linked”.
Air India corporate communication department has issued a statement that said the controversial party did take place, but only after the flight took off at 12.30 pm.
The statement said the flight was delayed by fog and not by the party.
I’d suggest checking out the whole story, but basically it seems that a party happened in Mumbai around the same time, and it was probably completely unrelated to the flight delay.
I guess it could be summed up by “oh my gosh, a flight is delayed and there are Air India employees dancing at the same time — how dare they!”
But more than anything, the fact that this is news ten months after the fact is pretty freaking unbelievable. I mean, I’ve had several delays in the past couple of weeks which have been longer than that, and one of them was erroneously blamed on weather. But that’s certainly not news.
I think what best sums up the situation is this “news” clip about the incident:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKf-0ar9sls
Those are quite possibly the most poorly filmed two minutes ever seen on a screen…. and that includes if you count Gigli and Abduction:
- This really qualifies as “INCREDIBLE NEWS?” Really?
- Why the eff are they having the reporter “film” from the street?
- Does he not hear the host asking him to shut up for about 90 seconds (oh no, of course not, because he’s filming on a loud street!)?
- If you’re going to show graphics of airplanes, make sure the entire plane fits on the screen, please!
Fun stuff!
Hahahah I love how you always post such hilarious stuff about India! It really makes my day! Let me know when you come to Bombay next; I'd be glad to show you around!
Come on really? There are plenty of "incredible" news from local channels in our backyards, wait a min it's not just local channels - it is big network news channels too. Why don't you write another blog post with all the first world problems that gets reported as news here in the US?
@ Jay -- If you see any that are travel related, I'd love to hear them!
1) That "Incredible News" shabby overlay is not done by the channel, rather than the YouTube poster
2) Times Now, the channel in question here, has ran a series of negative stories targeting AI in the recent past. No other channel picked up this stupid story.
Basically yea - india is nuts. Nothing surprising here, from the street noise, to the graphics, to the OMG INCREDIBLE NEWS. Work brings me there occasionally, and it's pretty amusing watching the local news or reading the newspaper.