Passenger insists on smoking on-board, flight suffers three-hour delay

Guwahati: An incident of an unruly passenger travelling through Vistara airlines has made news recently in which the passenger insisted on smoking while being on-board. This is a common rule and regulation followed by the airlines that 'no smoking' is mandatory and on such grounds, if such an unusual passenger appears who insists on smoking then this certainly is news.

The flight the passenger was boarding on Thursday was a Vistara airline flying on the Amritsar-Delhi-Kolkata route but had to suddenly land at Delhi airport due to the unruly behaviour of an unruly passenger. This is perhaps is the first of this kind of issue wherein a passenger argues with the cabin crew just for letting him smoke on-board.

It is due to the adamant passenger that the flight had to land un-planned, off-load the passenger and also had to suffer from a three-hour delay.

A statement released by the airline says, ‘We had an unruly customer situation who insisted on smoking onboard. He was issued a warning letter by the captain and later offloaded when he refused to comply.”

However, such unruly passengers are not uncommon these days as before this, in an another incident, another passenger was de-boarded by Jet Airways flight in Kolkata airport when the passenger pretended to be terrorist.

A young passenger who boarded a Jet Airways’ 9W 472 flight on November 26 was put down after he cracked jokes on having a terrorist in the plane with his friends. The incident took place when after boarding the flight, the passenger, Poddar covered his face with his handkerchief and started sending WhatsApp texts to his friends who were also in the same flight but in different seats.

An airlines security official stated, “After taking his seat, he covered his face with a handkerchief and started sending WhatsApp messages from his phone. A co-passenger sitting next to Poddar got suspicious given his behaviour of covering the face and read the message Poddar was keying in on his phone. One of them read ‘Terrorist on flight. I destroy women’s hearts.”

The official further added, “The pilot told the airline security and the Central Industrial Security Force was informed about Poddar. A CISF team immediately took custody of Poddar and made him get off the aircraft.”

Also read: Jet Airways Flight Delayed after Young Passenger Jokes of Terrorist in the Plane