Pilot suspended for misbehaving with Bengaluru flyers

NEW DELHI: The Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Monday suspended an IndiGo captain's flying licence for three months after a probe revealed that the senior pilot had misbehaved with a 75-year-old wheelchair-bound woman and her daughter on a Chennai-Bengaluru flight 6E-806 last month.
The altercation occurred after Supriya Unni Nair requested the lead cabin crew for early wheelchair assistance for her elderly mother during deplaning in Bengaluru.
The pilot-in-command intervened at this point, leading to an argument. A day after her harrowing experience, Nair had complained about the pilot's aggressive behaviour on social media on January 14.
‘Pilot’s attitude towards sr citizen was intimidating and lacked compassion’
Your captain on 6E 806 from Chennai to Bangalore on January 13 Jayakrishna harassed, threatened and prevented me and my 75-year old diabetic mom from disembarking the flight and threatened to arrest us because we asked for wheelchair assistance…. I tried calling the assistance bell and when the crew didn’t respond, I walked up for help. She (the cabin crew) claimed we don’t have access to a wheelchair when it was clearly printed on the ticket. When I pointed this out to her, the captain came barging out and yells at me for pressing the assistance button and annoying him and his crew. ‘How dare you call her (the cabin crew),’ he asks. Taken aback, I tell him not to yell at me and then the threats start. The wheelchair guys arrive and he points at mom and says you’re not going anywhere,” read her tweet.
“He prevents the wheelchair people from taking my mom out of the aircraft threatening us that he will ensure we are detained and spend a night in jail. Disbelievingly I ask him whether he is serious. ‘Shut up. Who do you think I am? I’ll get my CEO to make sure you spend a night in jail. We will teach you some manners,’ he says. My mom in the meanwhile is worried as he is so aggressive that he looks like he will get physically abusive with me and says please don’t be rude like that, to which he says he is the captain, his job is to fly the plane here and not be polite to mere passengers. ‘You have paid piddly Rs 2000, you don’t own the aircraft,’ he adds. ‘I will make sure you are barred from the skies’,” Nair tweeted.
When aviation minister H S Puri saw Nair’s tweets, he asked his office to immediately take up the issue with Indi-Go. “The airline has informed the aviation ministry that the pilot has been off-rostered (meaning will not be assigned flights) pending full inquiry,” Puri tweeted on January 14.
Following this, DGCA chief Arun Kumar ordered a probe into the issue and the pilot was issued a showcause notice and grounded. “After examining the reply of the PIC to the showcause notice, it was established that (his) attitude towards the wheelchair-bound senior citizen passenger was intimidating, threatening and lacked compassion. His actions led to avoidable detention of wheelchair-bound passenger. He exhibited lack of ability in managing threat and error situation especially when he was to operate another commercial flight after a short duration, DGCA has suspended the license held by the PIC for a period of three months,” said a DGCA official.