UN Diplomat Reports Cockroaches & More On Plane; Airline Does Nothing

by SharonKurheg

When passengers encounter large problems on a plane, especially ones that could potentially be a public relations nightmare, the airlines usually make it their business to fix them as soon as they can.

I mean, even something as simple as a broken table tray or a seat that needs repair will warrant one of these until the problem can be fixed:

a seat belt on a seat

And until they fix the problem, the person or persons sitting next to that seat (in this case, it was me) will consider themselves the winners of the airplane lottery.

But apparently sometimes problems just never get fixed.

Mr. Gurpreet Singh is the Deputy Permanent Representative appointed by India to represent the country at the United Nations. Along with other travel required by his position, he obviously needs to travel back and forth between India and the UN, which is located in New York City. So he’s not exactly an unimportant guy, and he’s obviously got a lot of flights under his belt.

On March 12, Singh was flying from New York to Delhi on Air India Flight 102. What he encountered apparently disturbed him so much that at 2:11pm, he sent a tweet about it:

As a UN diplomat, I’ve flown worldwide, but Air India 102 JFK to Delhi was my worst flight experience: broken seats, no entertainment/call buttons/reading lights, and cockroaches! Poison spray. Disregard for customer care! #airtravelnightmare #AirIndia #TataGroup

You’d think that after complaining and showing there were multiple cockroaches on the plane, the airline would respond quickly. But although he had tagged Tata Group and Air India, he got no response in return. So 2 hours later, he tweeted again, this time with more detail (via video) about his call button (among other things) being out of order.

By this point, more people were chiming in about their own miserable flights on Air India. Among other things, people mentioned:
  • Their own experiences with cockroaches
  • Remote control didn’t work
  • IFE didn’t work
  • No reading light
  • Broken arm rest
  • USB charger didn’t work
  • Lavatory broke right after takeoff
  • Filthy upholstery
  • Rotten smell throughout the plane
  • Broken overhead luggage space

Haven’t not heard back from the airline, Singh retweeted his experience 5 days later, on March 17th:

Crickets.

So he retweeted it again on March 20th

Finally, EIGHT DAYS after Mr, Sigh made his original complaint, Air India replied:

The worst thing of all? People who had replied to Singh said they had also encountered cockroaches, not only recently, but upwards of TWENTY YEARS AGO.

a screenshot of a social media posta screenshot of a social media post

Definitely not the way to run an airline. I think I need a shower now.

Feature Photo: public domain

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