Air India Gets Bizarre Punishment For Pee-Gate Incident

I Read , Licence suspended for 3 Months.

The sanctions have not been levied for the incident (the exact facts of which are still not quite clear), but rather for the failure of the company, the pilot and the director of in-flight services to report to DGCA that an incident did take place at all.

Seems like Air India is trying to out do emirates by offering golden showers in business in lieu of actual showers in first.
I flew air India recently to Singapore and the entire cabin smelt like a urinal. No wonder the guy mistook the ladies seat for the toilet in his inebriated state.
Frankly, Air India should have fired the crew and director of inflight services- what on earth were they thinking serving so much alcohol to a passenger? And why didn’t they handover this gentleman to the police when the aircraft landed.
The fine seems weird- Air India gets a paltry 37k while the employees personally are facing penalties that are far more impactful for them. I am not even sure if this is enforceable legally.

Pilot was fined as he intervened and denied permission to move the affected pax to an open F seat(from a J).
Poor judgement - allowing senior person to sit in crew jump seat but not allowing her to move to the only available F seat.

All of the cabin crew working that section of the cabin should have been fired. It would send out a strong message to not severe passengers that amount of alcohol and more importantly to NOT try to downplay a male passenger urinating on a female passenger. Those crew aren’t much better humans than him.

All appropriate punishments at least from what has been publicly disclosed. The captain at the very least engaged in a coverup by not reporting it to either the authorities or the airline. The message to the traveling public is that Air India, it’s crew and worst, it’s captain, couldn’t care less if you get pissed on in their business class cabin by a drunk passenger.

@IrishAlan - Have you actually read the crew reports? There remains significant doubt as to whether the incident occured as alleged. Something happened for sure, but what happened and what the accused's role in that was is still undetermined.

Did the incident really occur as mentioned or was it just a case of the older lady having a bladder incident.? And to cover that, some innocent person was blamed for the fiasco. And put down to drunkenness?

“Furthermore, fining the actual head of inflight service seems extreme as well. At the end of the day they’re following the instructions of higher leadership, so it seems to me like if anyone should be held accountable, it should be those higher up.”
Wouldn’t the head of inflight service be a position fairly high up in the organization?

This is what one of the news article in India says:
The allegations against the commander as well as the crew members are, that they did not carry out the dereliction of duties assigned to them in line with the DGCA norms. The allegations against the commander-in-charge are that he did not shift the 72-year-old woman to another seat, even when vacant seats were available in the business class.

The reason the Pilot got tagged is Cabin supervisor was asked by passenger if she could change the seat, supervisor as there were no more seats available in business class but only in first - didn't want to take call on her own so she asked pilot who took 2 hours to reply. So, the supervisor informed to passenger that she couldn't do anything about it. When lady asked for another seat again - she was threatened and forced to sit on the same seat.

The Supervisor got fined because he broke the law - He tried to make the lady (being treated as coercion by the law) forgive the passenger and acted as mediator (which is illegal and unethical) as perpetrator was directly put in proximity of the victim. He just took written apology from the passenger.

Airline got tagged because they failed to take appropriate steps before Women right commission in India started making calls on behalf of the lady which lead to current media backlash

Except the cabin supervisor was neither charged nor fined.

The fine on the captain is right. Reporting of all incidents in India depend upon the captain , Non-Reporting of an indident like this is also on the captain

Fining the director of inflight experience makes sense. Handling scenes like this should have some protocol , but I doubt any such protocol exists. Indian govt rarely holds people in specific roles accountable. This is a step in the right direction.

The fine on the airline is a pittance

People who are not really directly responsible for controling the situation were punished....

Did you follow the entire story?? The Captain was negligent and made a decision of that more trauma to that lady’s situation. First he voted against giving the 70 old lady an empty seat in First class - because of this the crew asked her sit back in the urine soak business class seat and later the option to sit in the tiny uncomfortable crew seat used during landing. Second, the Captain did not take any action or file a complaint. He and everyone else responsible needs to be held accountable else such incidents will become a norm. If an airline captain behaved like this in any other country they would have been punished more severely.

While it is correct to not consider the accused guilty until proven, it is more wrong to do victim blaming and shaming. Are you generalizing that all old ladies have continence or finding and excuse to defend that man. What if someone generalized that this man thought old woman is weak and that’s why chose to urinate on her instead of another male passenger? What if he knew that if he exposed his private parts to a younger women he would be facing sexual harassment charges. What if he had a fetish of peeing in front of older ladies? Anyone can speculate and escalate the situation but that doesn’t help. Maybe it’s as simple as stated that he could not handle his alcohol and after his bladder full after 4 drinks and in his drunken state he pissed on the woman thinking he was in the bathroom. While his intentions were not bad, as an adult he should be held accountable for this actions and the court should decide not the general public like us. Media did right in bringing attention to this case but it was wrong to expose his identity before all the facts came in.