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5 Times Air India Made Us Too Scared To Fly

Air India has faced several embarrassing incidents in the last few years.
Air India planes at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi.
SAJJAD HUSSAIN via Getty Images
Air India planes at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi.

India's national carrier Air India has been in the news a couple of times this week, but for all the wrong reasons.

The debt-ridden airline has been trying to cut costs and repair its financial situation for a few years now. But its image has taken a beating after repeated gaffes.

Air India has faced several embarrassing incidents in the last few years. Here are some of them.

Flight attendant falls off plane

A 53-year-old woman cabin crew member suffered serious injuries after she fell off an Air India aircraft in Mumbai.

She was reportedly closing the door before pushback when she fell from the plane. She is under treatment at Mumbai's Nanavati Hospital.

There is no confirmation yet on what exactly caused the woman to fall.

Airline flies aircraft with damaged belly

Last week, the pilot of a Dubai-bound Air India plane was flown into a wall by its pilot during take-off. Though the plane's underside was significantly damaged, the pilot continued to fly it.

PTI reported officials as saying that the flight may have been overloaded. The report said that the 136 people on board escaped miraculously. When passengers reportedly asked about the scary jerk on the plane, they were told by the crew that it was normal.

The flight was made to land in Mumbai and take another plane to Dubai. The pilots, after the mishap, had allegedly reported that "all operations were normal" in the cockpit.

Bed bugs in business class

In July, a woman who was traveling from Newark to Mumbai on business class with her three children took to Twitter to complain that the Air India flight had bed bugs in them.

NDTVquoted her as saying that her seat was not changed despite several pleas to the cabin crew.

The airline blamed the weather for the bed bugs.

Drunk pilots

India Today reported earlier this month that Air India said that 10 of its pilots were found to be drunk right before their flights in 2018. The report said that 58 pilots were detected to be inebriated over the past eight years. The airline was replying to a Right to Information query.

In April last year, a report said that a pilot was grounded for three months for being drunk before boarding a Delhi to Abu Dhabi flight.

Fatal accident

In 2015, an Air India service engineer was sucked into the engine of an aircraft in Mumbai, killing him. It was reported that the freak accident could have been caused by miscommunication between the engineer and the pilots. Both the pilot and the co-pilot were grounded for an investigation.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.