India’s largest airline by passenger traffic volume, Indigo has come under severe criticism for denying boarding to a specially-abled child and his parents, who were supposed to fly from Ranchi to Hyderabad, citing “safety of passengers”.
The three passengers were told by the Indigo staff present at the airport on the evening of 7 May that the child would have to become “normal” before he could be allowed to take the flight.
Eyewitnesses present at the airport said that the Indigo staff said that the child would not be allowed to take the flight since he was a “risk” to other passengers and that he had to become “normal” before he could become travel worthy.
The Indigo ground staff present at the Ranchi airport said that the child was “uncontrollable and in a state of panic”. However, this was refuted by co-passengers who said that child was “calm and sitting quietly on a wheelchair, terror stricken for being called out as a risk to the normal world”.
In a Facebook post by a passenger, Manisha Gupta, who was taking the same flight, said that the other co-passengers including government officials, teachers and doctors who were also taking the same flight assured the Indigo staff at Ranchi airport that they had no objections to the
child boarding the flight.
The Indigo staff also refused to heed the request of a delegation of doctors who were travelling in the same flight and had offered to provide full support to the child and his parents if any health-related incident would have occurred mid-air.
Despite this, as per eyewitness accounts on social media, the Indigo staff refused to let the child and his parents board the flight. The flight left from Ranchi for Hyderabad.
Indigo, in a statement released on Sunday evening, said: “In view of the safety of passengers, a specially-abled child could not board the flight with his family on May 07, as he was in a state of panic. The ground staff waited for him to calm down till the last minute, but to no avail. The airline made the family comfortable by providing them a hotel stay and the family flew the next morning to their destination. We regret the inconvenience caused to the passengers.”
This is not for the first time that Indigo has been called out for the way it handles its passengers. In October 2017, one of its staff was filmed assaulting a senior citizen passenger.