The Devil’s Advocate, serving you a cocktail of humour, wit and sarcasm
As I was strapping on my seat belt, before the flight could take off, a lovely flight attendant approached me and said, “Mr. Salunke. Welcome aboard. You have been our patron for many years and a frequent flyer with us. As a token of appreciation, we would like to offer you a free upgrade to the business class on this flight”.
I recoiled in horror and said, “Thanks but no thanks. I’m happy where I am in the economy class”. The flight attendant left me, bewildered.
After the recent “peeing incident” on the Air India flight, I have been so pissed off with business class travel. Business class has now become the cattle class? Do some passengers literally think business class is one in which they can do their “business”?
On 26 November 2022, a man was accused of urinating on a co-passenger, a woman, in the business class of an Air India flight from New York to Delhi. The accused, identified as Shankar Mishra, was allegedly in an inebriated condition. “During the course of the flight, shortly after lunch was served and the lights were switched off, I was getting ready to sleep, and another passenger walked to my seat completely inebriated. He unzipped his pants, relieved himself, and continued to expose me to his private parts. The passenger sitting next to me asked him to return to his seat. He did not respond immediately, but after a few moments, he left the area,” the woman, who is in her seventies, has said.
Shankar Mishra, who had been on the run after the alleged incident, was arrested by the police in Bengaluru after days of tracking his movements through physical, electronic as well as digital means. Later, he was sent to 14-day judicial custody.
In a new twist to the case, the accused has now claimed that he did not pee on the elderly woman but that she had passed urine on herself as she suffers from urinary incontinence (loss of bladder).
While the case is being dealt in the court, below are my suggestions to airlines around the world to prevent such incidents from taking place in the future.
- All boarding passengers shall pass through a bladder scanning machine. If the machine detects a full bladder, the passenger shall be turned back and made to empty his/her bladder before boarding.
- All passengers shall be given a pair of adult diapers along with the safety jacket. The airlines may also consider stipulating the wearing of adult diapers as a mandatory requirement for boarding the plane
- The aisle seats, especially the ones closer to the toilet, shall be reserved for passengers with weak bladder.
- The number of toilets shall be increased to sufficiently cater to all the passengers. At the moment, it appears that there is one toilet for every 200 passengers. We don’t want passengers pissing and moaning for having to wait in long queues to use the toilet.
- Remove all comedy films/TV shows from the inflight entertainment so that passengers don’t piss themselves laughing
- The safety demonstration, which is performed by the flight attendants just before take-off, shall include this announcement: “Urinating on other passengers is prohibited. Please use the toilet instead”
- If a passenger needs to go to the toilet in an emergency, he/she shall press a button to call the flight attendant who shall escort the passenger quickly to the toilet
- Announcements such as this shall be made regularly by the captain: “Passengers in rows 20 to 26 are now ordered to use the toilet”
- Serving of liquids, especially alcohol, shall be strictly monitored by flight attendants so that passengers don’t get piss-ass drunk.
- Breath tests of passengers for alcohol to be done so that passengers don’t board the plane fully pissed.
- Passengers involved in a peeing incident shall have their frequent flyer points reduced by 20,000 points to discourage them from zipping down their fly frequently.
This is not an article in taking the piss out of the airlines but an advisory one on how to deal with pissant passengers so that other passengers don’t take flight.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
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