Elderly woman 'urinated on' by co-passenger in flight

A complaint has been lodged by an Indian woman passenger flying onboard Air India from New York to New Delhi in which she claimed that a "drunk" co-passenger "urinated" on her, Indian media reported.

The woman, who was flying on the Business Class Flight AI102 of India's national airline, described her ghastly experience in detail in the complaint filed on the AirSewa portal.

Reportedly, the incident occurred on November 26, 2022. The complainant was flying on the same flight as a Mumbai-based businessman, and the incident ended with the airline barring the accused from travelling on its aircraft for the next 30 days.

In the complaint letter accessed by India Today, the woman passenger wrote about how the accused urinated on her. 

“He kept standing there until the person sitting next to me tapped him and told him to go back to his seat,” the complaint read, “at which point he staggered back to his seat.”

What made the matter worse for the victim was that the cabin crew allegedly brought the inebriated man back to the complainant and made the two sit opposite each other for the remainder of the journey.

“The flight staff were, in the meanwhile, also having discussions with the offender, who was sobering up by this time, and they came and told me that he wanted to apologise to me,” she wrote on the portal.

She claims that she had made it abundantly clear to the staff that she did not want to interact with the accused in any capacity whatsoever, and wanted him to be arrested as soon as the plane landed.

“However, the crew brought the offender before me against my wishes, and we were made to sit opposite each other in the crew seats,” the elderly woman wrote in her detailed complaint.

She further requested that Air India reimburse her for the shoes and clothes that had been ruined in the incident. However, the airline denied any involvement in the event and thus directed her to seek reimbursement from the accused himself.

The lady added that the airline had taken the phone number which "they later passed on to the offender for payment for my shoes and dry cleaning".

However, she returned the payment as she did not want to take his money and felt that the airline should take responsibility for what happened.

Unfortunately, the lady recounted that her ordeal did not end upon arrival. Since she is a senior citizen, she alleged that she was taken in a wheelchair to the terminal and had to wait for 30 minutes.

The woman passenger said that the Air India crew had proved deeply unprofessional and that there had been more than one transgression and problem during the flight.

“It is a shame when a national airline fails to protect the safety and dignity of their customers, especially senior citizens. Clearly, this has to be addressed by the people at the highest level,” she concluded.