India might have rules in place to protect airline crew from the slaps, whacks and smacks of unruly passengers, but a new problem came calling last week after a cabin supervisor slapped a flight attendant onboard an Air India flight on its way to Frankfurt from Delhi. What can a flight attendant do if their supervisor is the one who has landed a slap? Not much, because if they retaliate, the commander will divert and land the flight at the closest airport in the interest of safety.

The incident took place onboard AI flight 121 on 17 March, over an hour after it departed Delhi airport at 2.20 pm. 'A flight attendant mistakenly served a business-class passenger a non-vegetarian meal instead of a vegetarian one. The passenger, who was seated on 1D, saw it was the wrong meal and pointed it out to the cabin supervisor who happened to be around,' said a source. The cabin supervisor is the person in charge of the cabin crew on a flight. In this case, the supervisor also happened to be an Air India nodal officer for liaising with the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA), a post that came with power. The supervisor took up the case with the flight attendant, who on realizing her mistake, rushed to the passenger, apologized profusely and replaced his meal. A senior cabin crew member said, 'She remained calm. Had she hit back, imagine the show of fisticuffs that would have played out in the business-class galley? The flight would be diverted, passengers would suffer, and the airline's image would be hit. But now it's just the case of a bad apple.' The passenger who was served the wrong meal did not lodge a complaint. The flight attendant filed a complaint with her department head. A response from AI was awaited at the time of going to press.

The incident comes close to a year after the infamous 23 March slap gate when Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad kicked, punched and abused an Air India ground staffer in Delhi, only to find himself make history as the first passenger to be ever unanimously banned by all airlines. Months later, the DGCA came up with regulations on the 'handling of unruly passengers'. It seems it's time to amend it to include unruly cabin crew members as well.

Case Study Questions

2. What do you think of the way in which the supervisor handled the situation? How should s/he have handled the situation instead?
4. What do you think of the way the flight attendant handled herself in response to the supervisor's behavior?
6. Would she have been justified if she had slapped the supervisor?
8. If you were asked to re-design the training program for Air India, what specific items would you include to help prevent such incidents? For supervisors? For subordinates?

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

he passage describes a troubling incident that happened on an Air India flight from Delhi to Frankfu... View the full answer