On a crash course

Airlines need a higher level of passenger management skills

The video clip showing three IndiGo staffers assaulting a passenger is being seen as a case of hubris for an airline that has zoomed to leadership in terms of market share since its founding in 2005 — Air India, of all airlines, has chosen to take a dig at its upstart rival. Viewed in isolation, the thuggish response of a senior staffer in instigating his juniors brooks no excuse under any circumstances. Seen in a wider perspective, however, this passenger-airline staff face-off is a symptom of an endemic issue in domestic civil aviation that both the airlines and the ministry urgently need to address. 

L’contretemps IndiGo may be the first instance of airline staff assaulting passengers but it is no means the first example of airline staff-passenger tensions this past year. Earlier in the month, ace shuttler P V Sindhu flayed an IndiGo employee for behaving “rudely”. In March, the infamous incident of a Shiv Sena MP beating an Air India staffer with his slippers at Delhi airport because his flight did not have business class seats, was raised in Parliament. In October, the son of a Bollywood singer was shown abusing IndiGo staff at Raipur airport for being asked to pay for extra baggage. These incidents are known thanks to social media but any regular air traveller can corroborate the growing testiness in passenger-staff relations over the past few years. 

A good part of this unpleasantness is a product of the average Indian’s innate discourtesy towards service providers. Indeed, the clip of the latest altercation suggests that it began with the passenger allegedly abusing the ground staff over a delay in the arrival of a terminal bus. It is worth noting that in September the ministry of civil aviation bowed to airline demands and issued guidelines on a no-fly list under which unruly passengers can be barred from flying for a limited period or a lifetime. Some passenger education on basic airline etiquette — on the lines that Air Canada used to do for passengers from the interiors of Punjab — would not go amiss, especially with many first-time fliers coming on board. Equally, staffers are expected to be trained to handle passenger wrath, however unjustified. 

For this shortening of fuses, blame the explosive growth of domestic aviation. The advent of the low-cost airlines has seen the number of domestic passengers more than double over the decade — from 44 million in 2007-08 to 104 million in 2016-2017 and the passenger load factor has shot up from 68.9 per cent to 84.3 per cent. These growing numbers and the pressure to maximise revenue from an increasingly competitive business have forced airlines to impose restrictions that may be acceptable international practice but are irksome nevertheless. All of this demands a higher level of passenger management skills if Indian airlines want to avoid the notorious reputation of US airlines. 

It is fair to say that established airlines have begun to lag on this requirement. Adding to this poor experience is the railway station-like crowding at airports, leading to frustratingly long queues. Six airports — Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad — handle two-thirds of air traffic, and work at 70 to 80 per cent of capacity already. By 2022, passenger numbers are expected to exceed capacity. This has implications for safety too: DGCA statistics show that the number of serious incidents has jumped from five in 2005 to 11 in 2016. But airport expansion is progressing at snail’s pace. All of which suggests that unless the airlines and the civil aviation ministry take some proactive steps, incidents like the IndiGo one are likely to recur.