An on board incident reportedly involving a fight between the pilot and purser took place on Monday, 17 June, in an Air India Flight AI-770 from Bengaluru to Kolkata.
The pilot and purser of flight AI-770 allegedly got into a bizarre fight when he asked his senior crew member to rinse his lunchbox at the time of take off. The fight went on till the flight was ready to take off. By the time the crew members noticed, it came in full view of the passengers on board. The captain and ember of the crew have now been ‘de-rostered’, according to this report on NDTV.
As soon as the information reached the airline authorities, both of them were grounded and the flight was delayed for two hours until another captain and purser joined.
The case is now under the examination of Air India and Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
The incident allegedly took place when AI’s Airbus 770 was preparing to take off from Bengaluru airport towards Kolkata. The pilot, who is said to have brought his own lunch, first asked one of the crew members to heat it. Later, he ordered him to rinse the box. When this was objected to by the crew member, an argument started between the two, says this report.
According to AI spokesman, Ashwini Lohani, Chairman, Air India has considered this as a serious issue. The duties of the two have been taken away for now and they have been summoned to the Delhi Headquarters for questioning on Thursday, 20 June.
The flight that was scheduled at 11:15 am got delayed and landed Kolkata 77 minutes late.
One of the senior pilots said to the Times of India, “ Crew members fighting on board aircraft, or during layovers between fight is simply not acceptable. It does not matter who started the fight or instigated the same, the other person should have acted with restraint, maturity and should have filed a report with the management for further actions,”
According to a cabin crew member, these fights are not that unusual and pilots often order the crew members to do such menial jobs.
(With inputs from Times of India and NDTV
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