Ground staff harass Cathay Pacific passengers on board
Ground staff harass Cathay Pacific passengers on board
There has been an increasing number of incidents of passengers on board International Airlines facing harrassment at the hands of crew members.
Notwithstanding warnings and action initiated, yet such ugly incidents keep cropping up.
The recent bizzare incident that comes to light is by Mumbai based senior lawyer Divyakant Mehta and his wife who were mistreated on board the Cathay Pacific Mumbai Hong Kong flight.
As per the Senior lawyer in his tweet, he and his wife were scheduled to fly to Hong Kong on March 14, however, much to their shock, they were deplaned since they were in possession of a Federal Aviation Administration approved portable oxygen concentrator for his ailing wife.
Their passports were too taken away.
Exacerbating on the incident he said his wife and himself were publicly humiliated, harassed and threatened by the ground staff and eventually offloaded from the plane for the simple reason that we had a FAA approved Philips Portable Oxygen Concentrator in our hand luggage as his wife was suffering from a lung condition of Pulmonary Fibrosis.
Adding that they were initially denied boarding. Even after receiving ground clearance and boarding the aircraft, the crew told them they cannot charge the portable battery since they’d not paid additional charges.
They offloaded their luggage took away their passports and were treated as criminals. The senior lawyer further claimed that they always carry the warranty card, medical records and 2 spare batteries which were shown to the airline staff in this instance.
He further went in to add that said the couple has accessed services of 47 different airlines throughout the world and travelled long-haul flights to America with the device and had never faced any issue as such.
Reportedly, the Ground Staff and crew of Flight CX 660 never even had the courtesy to offer 2 distressed senior citizen business class passengers a glass of water after 5 hours of drama at the gate and on the flight. He wondered how they would treat an economy class passenger under similar circumstances.
Ironically, the airline has yet to respond to his claim.
News Input K.V.Raman
