Deeply offended to find chicken in their vegetarian meals, passengers on a Shanghai-Delhi-Mumbai Air India flight made a huge hue and cry about the airline's goof-up. Refusing to settle for repeated apologies from senior crew members of the airline, the irate passengers eventually demanded that the crew members should touch their feet and apologise. While the national carrier's in-flight crew bore the brunt of the agitated flyers, the blame rested on the Chinese caterer who uploaded the meals at Shanghai's Pudong airport.
The incident occurred on September 25, minutes after the crew served dinner to the largely-Indian passengers onboard. In his flight report filed with the airline, crew member S C Rupani reported that the situation got aggressive at one point and the captain had to be informed about it, who in turn informed security officials to be ready when the plane landed at Delhi airport. While the vegetarian meals uploaded in Shanghai had red foils, the non-vegetarian meals with chicken had the green foils. "When a family seated in the economy section brought this to our notice, we immediately apologised and changed the entire meal of the group," Rupani said in his report, adding that within minutes a few other passengers complained about meat in their meals. Even as the crew members were changing the meals, some flyers got irritated. "The moment one of them announced that beef had been served to them, many of the flyers got agitated and things got out of hand," Rupani said in his report, adding that the flyers not only wanted the complain in writing but also demanded apology from seniors in Air India when they land in Delhi. "One of them even threatened to commit suicide if he was not given an apology to his satisfaction. Things became really tense mid-air," the report says. While the entire cabin crew tried its best to pacify the flyers, security officials were informed to rope in the catering and commercial officials to calm the flyers.
After landing in Delhi, a group of passengers insisted that they will not deplane unless senior airline officials came onboard and apologized to them. "Our crew members were asked to touch the feet and apologise. Would they dare inflict this humiliation on the crew of a foreign airline?" said a senior Air India crew member, adding that on one hand the crew is working under tremendous stress and on the other hand, it has to fight for its rights with the management.
A similar incident had occurred in June this year on the same flight from Shanghai, when 90 passengers were served prawns in a vegetarian meal. "The management had talked about penalising the Chinese caterer, but no action was taken," the crew member said.
When contacted to comment on the incident, Air India's Managing Director Ashwani Lohani said that he will seek details and revert.
