149 air travellers put on ‘no-fly list’ in the past three years, says govt.

As many as 149 air travellers have been banned by airlines and put on the “no-fly list” in the past three years for unruly conduct, the government told Parliament on Monday.

Of these, smoking inside aircraft lavatory, drunken behaviour and a brawl with cabin crew and fellow passengers are most common.

Passenger arrested for smoking on Kolkata-Bengaluru flight

A large chunk of these complaints are due to improved reporting about unruly behaviour ever since the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) imposed a penalty of ₹30 lakh in January on Air India for failing to take action against a 34-year-old passenger, Shankar Mishra, who urinated over a senior citizen lady traveller on a New York to Delhi flight in November, according to a senior government official.

The official added that following the action against the erstwhile national carrier, the regulator has seen “two-three” complaints being brought to his attention every day as airlines improved their reporting mechanism.

Also read | Explained: What are the airlines’ rules on misbehaviour onboard

The DGCA had imposed a penalty on Air India, along with suspending the pilot-in-command for three months, for the “systemic failure” in reporting the incident and failing to hand over the passenger to security personnel and allowing him to walk scot-free once the flight landed in Delhi on November 27 last year.

The acts of misdemeanours reported by airlines can be broadly divided into three categories — passengers smoking inside the lavatory onboard an aircraft, misconduct after drinking, and argument or brawl with cabin crew and fellow travellers, said the official.

Air India passenger held for ‘unruly behaviour’ on flight

In January 2020, when IndiGo banned standup comic Kunal Kamra for heckling a senior journalist onboard and then Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Puri requested other airlines to similarly ban him, he was only the second person to be put on the no-fly list.

Before him, Mumbai-based businessman Birju Kumar Salla was placed on the list on October 2017, for leaving a hoax message about a bomb onboard a Jet Airways aircraft. An NIA court in 2019 punished him with life imprisonment in 2019.

The rules for unruly behaviour were announced just a month before the incident in September 2017, under which airlines were allowed to restrict a passenger from with it flying for a period of 3 months to up to life, depending on the severity of the offence.