'How many did you hit today?': Indigo passenger to airline staff
Days after the release of the video showing the alleged manhandling of an indigo passenger, the flight staff are now experiencing a huge public relations crises.
Passengers at various airports are walking up to the boarding gate/ladder point and questioning the staff "Aaj kitne logo ko maara?" (How many did you hit today?), said an employee. The hardest hit are the ground staff.
In a letter sent to employees, the CEO and president of the airline Aditya Ghosh has asked all his employees "to stay calm".
In the email to employees, he said: "Stay calm, not to get provoked and don't get drawn into any argument."
The complaints from employees are coming from all across the airports. Besides this, the employees are also getting tagged on various social media memes.
An IndiGo staff allegedly manhandled a passenger at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport on October 15. The video of the ground staff of IndiGo Airways manhandling the passenger went viral on social media.
IndiGo director Aditya Ghosh had blamed the sacked "whistleblower" for manhandling the passenger after a verbal altercation.
In a report to the civil aviation ministry, he mentioned that the staff was trying to prevent the passengers and was only 'doing its job'.
"The ex-employee, Montu Kalra who was terminated and is claiming to be the 'whistleblower', is the one you can hear shouting in the video and instructing the other two colleagues, who were junior to him, to prevent the customer from boarding the bus and to hold him back at the ramp itself."
The incident unfolded when 6E 487 flew into Delhi from Chennai. Soon after alighting from Airbus A-320, Rajiv Katiyal, a passenger, got into an argument with some ground staff employees and he allegedly abused them. This led to a confrontation even though no one is clear about the reason behind the argument.
After the argument, Katiyal was not only stopped by the ground staffers from boarding the bus, which was taking the passengers to the terminal but was allegedly manhandled. In the video, the ground staffers are seen pinning Katiyal to the ground almost for a minute.