An Air India flight on Thursday was carrying several high profile passengers including MPs and politicians Delhi to Kochi in Kerala. But the flight took off late by two hours and the reason was not any VVIP passenger.
As passengers on board waited for their flight to take off, suddenly an ugly fight broke out between two airlines stewardesses.
NK Premachandran, MP from Kollam was quoted by Indian Express, “it’s 11.22 pm and we’ve just landed in Kochi. We had boarded the flight at 5.50 pm. and for two hours we were on board before the flight took off. Flight was full. There were MPs including Prakash Karat and many bureaucrats, who had a meeting with election commission officials.It was a quarrel between the air hostess that delayed the flight by almost two hours.”
An embarrassed Air India Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani said, “We have suspended the two cabin crew members for delaying the flight. We will not tolerate any indiscipline at the airline.”
A PTI report said that initially it was an argument over some personal issue between a junior cabin crew and the second senior cabin crew, which later turned into a full scale scuffle.
“However, it turned into heated exchange of words, forcing the commander to intervene. But when they refused to relent, the operations in charge decided to offload both of them and deploy new crew in their place, “sources said.