Exclusive: Air India CEO On How Airline Plans To Deal With Unruly Passengers

NDTV

3 days ago

New Delhi:
Amid mounting concerns from fliers over Air India's quality of services and incidents of rowdy passengers creating ruckus aboard a flight, the airline's CEO, Campbell Wilson, in an exclusive conversation with NDTV, answered tough questions on incidents of clogged toilets forcing flight diversions, passenger misconduct toward the cabin crew and how the airline plans to deal with such incidents.
The Air India CEO spoke about the support from the aviation watchdog, DGCA, in dealing with such incidents. He also shared the state of Air India's fleet refurbishment and how the airline plans to expand its global footprint.
'Need To Acceptable Standard Of Behaviour'
The Air India CEO said there needs to be an "acceptable standard of behaviour on any form of transport, including aviation," and we need to hold the customers to those standards, acceptable if they try to transgress.
In the past, unruly passengers have caused chaos mid-air - from aggressive behaviour towards the cabin crew to shocking incidents where drunken fliers urinated on fellow travellers, causing a ruckus.
Air India flights have faced major disruptions due to the malfunctioning of lavatories. In March this year, NDTV reported that an Air India flight from Chicago to Delhi was forced to return to its point of departure due to unserviceable lavatories on the plane. The staff of the AI126 flight discovered operational issues in eight of the 12 toilets onboard.
Roughly two hours after takeoff, the attendants reported that some of the lavatories in the Business Economy section were out of order. An investigation by the flight crew uncovered the alarming cause: a series of blockages resulting from certain items having been thrown into the toilets.
A picture showed plastic waste had also been flushed down one of the toilets on the aircraft.
Also read: Pics Show What Clogged Air India Lavatories, Causing Flight To Return To US
Other pictures sourced by NDTV, of at least two such incidents from separate Air India flights, showed an entire blanket being pulled out from an aircraft plumbing tube, and another image showed an item of clothing in a tube.
(1) Images of what was flushed down the toilet of AI-126, an Air India 777-300ER which flew 5 hours on a flight to India before having to return to Chicago when most of its toilets were clogged - plastic waste and what appears to be clothing. @ndtv pic.twitter.com/PUdEYllXXw
— Vishnu Som (@VishnuNDTV) March 10, 2025
Responding to such incidents, Mr Wilson said, "We have to educate (passengers) because it is true that some people may not be experienced travellers and may not be aware of the implications of their actions or the implications of having, you know, one too many drinks at altitude."
Mr Wilson said, "As an airline, we need to equip our crew with the training and the confidence and the assurance that they will be supported when they hold people to standards of behaviour that we expect."
Mr Wilson said the concerns are "multifaceted". There's not an easy solution, but I think it's just something we need to keep at. It's a difficult situation for an airline, particularly a flight which is operational, which has to divert for whatever reason is."
The Air India CEO said such incidents also lead to a financial hit and cause inconvenience to hundreds of other passengers onboard the plane and to those who are waiting for the aircraft to arrive. He added that dealing with such situations is an active part of the crew training.
Support from DGCA
To a question on how the aviation regulator of India, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has supported airlines when such incidents occur, Mr Campbell said, "In times past, if there was an incident on board our aircraft that we felt we wanted to report to the police, our crew would need to physically go to the police premises and oftentimes wait many, many hours to be able to report. And this is after they had operated a 10 or a 15-hour flight, which is just, it wasn't acceptable."
"The authorities have realised this as an impediment to reporting and, therefore, encouraging good behaviour. So they've changed the process so that our crew can do their duty of reporting without having to be so inconvenienced in the process. So people are recognising the issue," he further said.
"The solutions are coming into place. It's not an easy problem to solve, but I think there's a concerted and shared vision to solve it," he added.
State Of Air India's Fleet Refurbishment
The passenger revenue has more than doubled, and cargo revenue has tripled since the privatisation of Air India. Over 50 per cent of the fleet today offers new or upgraded cabin interiors, and half a million passengers are now seeing the new Air India every week, Mr Wilson shared.
The Air India CEO said, "65 per cent of our current narrowbody fleet is already equipped with world-class interiors. Our narrowbody fleet that flies domestic and short-haul international routes will complete a retrofit by the end of the year. 35 per cent of the current widebody fleet offers new or significantly upgraded interiors, with those aircraft operating on multiple routes to major gateways around the world, including New York, New Jersey, San Francisco, London Heathrow, Frankfurt, Dubai, Bali, Mauritius, and Singapore. By the end of FY26, this number will increase to 65 per cent."
Air India holds a 49 per cent market share on the top-five metro-to-metro routes. This comes amid increased customer satisfaction by 45 points in the last 18 months, with customer satisfaction on the new A350s is 100 percentage points (ppts) higher than legacy widebodies, at over 60.
A demand for premium seats has been increasing steadily, with Air India seeing 2X growth in sales of premium seats over the last two years.
Air India's Transformation Process
Mr Wilson shared Air India's transformation plan and how they are in the process of expanding their fleet to increase their global footprint. He said that Air India has already doubled the number of flights it operated in the last three years.
The legacy jets, Boeing 787-8, will undergo retrofit in July, which will be completed by the Financial Year 2026. The Air India CEO said, "13 of our legacy Boeing 777s are undergoing an interim 'heavy refresh', expected to be completed by end-2025. Full retrofit of these aircraft will happen in late 2026/2027."
"We've increased the number of international destinations by about 25 per cent, whether it's Europe, North America, Australasia, East Asia, Middle East, we've already increased the footprint. But I think what we've seen, even with those net 100 aircraft joining, going from less than 100 aircraft to more than 300 aircraft, what we've seen is really just the beginning. Because the aircraft that we could bring in to drive that expansion were the ones that were already available in the market for immediate use," Mr Wilson said.
"The 570 that we've purchased, which are being manufactured for us, will more than double the fleet from what we have... I think whether it's any of the geographies I've mentioned, Air India's global footprint is going to be much larger, and it should be. The size of the country, the growth rate of the economy, the increasing centrality of India in the international supply chain, the size of the diaspora, and the physical geography you have to bring people through India, not just to and from India," he added.
"All of the winds are at India's back at the moment, and I think we're in a very exciting place and Air India is incredibly central to realising the opportunity of Indian aviation and making sure the benefits of that growth accrue on Indian soil and are benefiting Indian people," the airline's CEO said.