'Anguished': Tata Group Chairman N Chandrasekaran issues first statement on Air India peeing incident

N Chandrasekaran, Chairman Tata Group, which owns Air India admitted that the airline fell short of addressing the peeing situation on an elderly the way they should have.

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N Chandrasekaran, Tata Group Chairman, on Sunday (January 8) issued the first statement over the whole peeing on an elderly incident in the Air India flight. He admitted on Air India's response to be less swift in the whole incident where a drunk passenger named Shankar Mishra allegedly urinated on a 70-year-old woman on one of its New York-Delhi flight. The fiasco took place on November 26, 2022 and Chairman said the action by the Tata-owned former national airline should have been "much swifter". The accused Shankar Mishra was arrested by the Delhi Police from Bengaluru on Saturday. 

N Chandrasekaran's statement

In a statement, which came days after the aviation regulator DGCA pulled up the Tata Group-owned full service carrier, Chandrasekaran also said that "we fell short of addressing this situation the way we should have." In a shocking incident, an inebriated man allegedly urinated on a female co-passenger, a senior citizen in her seventies, in the business class of Air India New York-New Delhi flight on November 26 last year.

"The incident on Air India flight AI102 on November 26, 2022, has been a matter of personal anguish to me and my colleagues at Air India. Air India's response should have been much swifter. We fell short of addressing this situation the way it should have been," Chandrasekaran said in the statement on Sunday.

"The Tata group and Air India stand by the safety and well-being of our passengers with full conviction. We will review and repair every process to prevent or address any incidents of such unruly nature," he added in the statement.

DGCA's action on Air India

DGCA has said Air India's conduct in handling the incident was "unprofessional" and it has issued show cause notices to the airline, its director of in-flight services and the crew that operated the flight.

With PTI inputs