IndiGo Passenger Assaults Pilot Over Fog Delay

It’s fog season at DEL airports in December to February, more so at some hours of the day than others. Layer on the massive smog problem and it has an impact on operations and has long been a seasonal problem. The drama maker with the Indigo flight got hit by the nature of DEL and their own ignorance.

He’s as lovely as the IRS agent Jim, who wants me to settle my tax debts via gift cards.

How can he slap??

There is more to the story supposedly.

The pilot in question was lecturing the passengers how they were asking too many questions and that caused them to miss their departure slot. That statement was what set the passenger off and got him upset enough to physically assault the crew.

Furthermore, this passenger had supposedly been on the aircraft for over 4 hours (and a further 5+ hours at the airport) and had been requesting to disembark but was constantly being refused. So he stated after the fact that this was the only way for him to be removed from the aircraft.

Never an excuse for violence, but also poor passenger handling by Indigo judging by this story and the dozens of similar (yet non-violent) incidents that occured over their network yesterday.

Back in the days of ModiLuft — definitely in Q1 and probably that of Q1 1996 , I got stuck for hours on a plane at DEL — when flying to BLR — after hours long delays to board the plane. Lots of fog-related delays and unhappy passengers but no one took it out on the airline cockpit and cabin crews. Unfortunately, in the time since then, way more Indian passengers have become far more coarse and physically aggressive and India has been the precursor of what kind of drama we have been getting out of Florida and with Spirit in the last couple of years.

Either it was an increadible reaction by the flight attendant to pull the trolley between the crew and the attacker or they did expect something like this to happen?

Sounds to me like he could just have stayed in the front and demanded to be let off the plane. If he ignored all requests to be calm and sit down he would have been removed as well but without assault charge and maybe even without no-fly list entry.

@ Sean M. -- Interesting, thanks for the heads up on that! Is this written about anywhere? Haven't seen that, so would be curious to add those details to post. Thanks!

Yes it is, a Russian passenger who was also on the same flight to Goa gave the interview.

Well he was delayed, lectured to like everyone else. Nobody else lost control soooo.

Agree with the other comment. The action from the passenger is not right but there is more to the story.

Entitled Passenger ?

What a feral monkey.

I mean it is India. A lot needs to change.
I also would have offloaded the pax. That is a long delay.
Both have fault with the passenger having 90% of the blame. The company had 10%
Sucks for the pilot.