DGCA pulls up Air India for repeated incidences of passengers being put to discomfort

MUMBAI: Country’s civil aviation regulator – the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) – has pulled up Tata group-run Air India for “repeated incidences of passengers being put to discomfort”.

The DGCA on Friday issued a show-cause issued to the airline after passengers suffered from insufficient cabin cooling on two of its recent flights (Mumbai-San Francisco AI-179 flight on May 24 and the Delhi-San Francisco AI-183 flight on May 30) that were inordinately delayed.

According to reports, an Air India Delhi to San Francisco flight on Thursday was delayed over 24 hours.

Passengers were allegedly made to board the flight and sit without any air conditioning, due to which many had dizziness and some even fainted.

“Whereas, it has come to the notice of DGCA that flight Al-179 dated 24.05.2024 and flight A – 183 dated 30.05.2024 were inordinately delayed and passengers were put to discomfort due to insufficient cooling in the cabin. Further, repeated incidences of passengers being put to discomfort by M/s Air India in violation of various DCA CAR provisions have come to notice,” said DGCA in its show-cause notice.

This is not the first time that Air India which has ambitions to become a true global airline from India, has been pulled up by DGCA.

In January this year, the airline was fined Rs 1.10 crore by the regulator for safety violations on some long-range routes while in March, it was slapped with Rs 80 lakh fine for violating flight duty time limitations.