Banker Banned From Flying Air India After Urinating On Fellow Passenger

Golden amenities, golden tickets, gold star service… golden showers? A man has received a 30-day flight ban from Air India after peeing on a business-class passenger.

You might aspire to be a gold-class flyer on some airlines’ frequent flyer programs, but you probably don’t want this. In a story that beggars belief, a banking executive has allegedly been given a 30-day flight ban after exposing himself and urinating on a fellow passenger.

The fellow passenger was a woman in her seventies, who was in a business class aisle seat. The woman alerted flight crew to the incident, however, they did not have the man arrested upon the flight’s landing in Delhi.

The woman wrote a letter to the chairman of the Tata Group (the owners of Air India) and it was reportedly only then that the airline launched an investigation. In the letter, the woman said the crew were “not proactive” and that she had to advocate for herself.

She said that shortly after lunch, when the lights were switched off, “another passenger walked to my seat, completely inebriated.” According to the woman’s letter: “he unzipped his pants, relieved himself and continued to expose me to his private parts.”

After relieving himself, the man allegedly continued to stand there and only moved after another passenger asked him to leave. The woman went to the toilet to clean herself up, and the crew gave her pyjamas and slippers to change into. A stewardess also sprayed disinfectant on the woman’s bag and shoes.

The woman was then reportedly given a narrow crew seat, despite other business-class seats rumouredly being vacant. She apparently sat there for an hour before being asked to return to her seat, upon which flight attendants had put sheets. Two hours after this she was given yet another crew seat.

“Mr N Chandrasekaran’a response should have been much swifter. He fell short” https://t.co/DewOgCR49x
— Jagriti Chandra (@jagritichandra) January 8, 2023

A spokesperson for the airline said: “A passenger behaved in an unacceptable and undignified manner on the New York-Delhi flight” explaining that this behaviour “caused extreme distress to a fellow passenger.”

“A police complaint has already been lodged and Air India is committed to assist the law enforcement agencies as well as regulatory authorities,” the spokesperson added.

The airline also said in a statement that the passenger had been banned from flying with Air India for 30 days or until the decision of the airline’s internal committee. Additionally, the airlines said that if the passenger was found guilty then action will be taken against the unruly passenger “as per regulatory guidelines.”

In the aftermath of the incident, which happened last year, but which has properly only come to light in the last week, it has been reported that the unruly passenger was a banking executive who boarded the flight drunk.

As dw.com reports, “US banking giant Wells Fargo fired Shankar Mishra, a vice president with the company, after he allegedly urinated on an elderly woman on an Air India flight from New York to Delhi.”