Free Republic

Wells Fargo doesn’t exactly have the best reputation for the way its employees treat people, but this might be going too far.Shankar Mishra, a vice president for the bank’s office in Mumbai, was on a flight from New York to New Delhi on Nov. 26, when he reportedly had a little too much to drink. The 72-year-old woman in a seat near him said that Mishra unzipped his pants and urinated on her. “During the course of the flight, shortly after lunch was served and the lights were switched off, a male business class passenger seated in 8A walked to...

Air India is facing criticism over new grooming guidelines for its cabin crew that were published in the Indian media. The strict rules include five pages dedicated to hairstyles alone, while other sections dictate strict guidelines for what staff are allowed to wear in hotels. What are the new rules? All cabin crew have been told to regularly dye gray hair, according to a document published by Indian broadcaster NDTV. It is mandatory for crew with "frizzy hair" to undergo hair smoothing or relaxing treatments. "Wavy, curly and frizzy hair cannot be left open," the guidelines state, adding: "Bushy, unruly...

The Vatican said on Saturday that Chinese authorities had violated the terms stipulated in its provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops. A statement released on Nov. 26 said that “the Holy See noted with surprise and regret” that Bishop John Peng Weizhao had been installed as an “auxiliary bishop of Jiangxi,” a diocese that is not recognized by the Vatican. Peng’s installation ceremony in Nanchang, China “did not occur in accordance with the spirit of dialogue … and what was stipulated in the Provisional Agreement on the Appointment of Bishops, on September 22, 2018,” it said. The Vatican statement...

Hello, One of two men acquitted in the 1985 Air India terrorist bombing was shot and killed in British Columbia on Thursday morning, according to media reports. RCMP say they responded to reports of gunfire in an area of the city of Surrey, southeast of Vancouver, and located a man suffering from gunshot wounds. “The man was provided first aid by attending officers until Emergency Health Services took over his care. The injured man succumbed to his injuries on scene, “ according to a statement from RCMP Constable Sarbjit Sangha. The constable said the shooting was targeted, and a suspect...

Survivors of an Air India express plane crash say the jetliner swayed violently as it approached a hilltop runway soaked by monsoon rain. Moments later, the special return flight for Indians stranded abroad by the pandemic skidded off, nosedived and cracked in two, leaving at least 18 dead and more than 120 injured. The 2-year-old Boeing 737-800 flew from Dubai to Kozhikode, also called Calicut, in Kerala. There were 174 adult passengers, 10 infants, two pilots and four cabin crew on board. In a telephone interview from his hospital bed, Renjith Panangad, a plumber who was returning home for the...

An Air India Express plane with nearly 200 people on board has crash-landed during heavy rain in southern India’s Kerala state, killing at least three people and injuring more than 50 others, local officials say. The accident happened at 7:40 p.m. on Friday when the aircraft, a Boeing 737, was attempting to land at Calicut International Airport after a flight from Dubai. Visibility was said to be low due to heavy rain.

The 50 yr-old rabid anti-Israel Irish lawyer/activist who was jailed for 6 months after a drunken, racist incident onboard an Air India flight to London has been found dead on an English beach. A disgraced anti-Israel activist from Britain who was jailed for staging a rowdy and racist scene aboard an airplane was found dead in what police are treating as a suicide. The lifeless body of Simone Burns, 50, also known as Simone O’Broin, was found last month on a beach, the Daily Telegraph reported Thursday. Sussex Police confirmed her death “is not being treated as suspicious” and next of kin have been...

A prominent anti-Israel barrister has been jailed for six months after she was videoed ranting drunkenly on an Air India flight about how she was “an international criminal lawyer for the f***ing Palestinian people”, and spat in the face of a member of the cabin crew. Simone Burns from Hove, also known as Simone O’Broin, was sentenced at Isleworth Crown Court on Thursday, having pleaded guilty to both assault and being drunk on an aircraft at her trial last month at Uxbridge Magistrates Court. In footage of the incident filmed by a fellow passenger, Burns can be seen remonstrating with...

- Passengers on flights from Newark Liberty International Airport to India are complaining about bed bug infested seats. In one case this week a family complained their infant was covered in bites and bleeding by the time the 17-hour flight landed in Mumbia. Pravin Tonsekar tweeted Air India photos of his seat with apparent bed bugs on them. Air India replied with a comment that it is: "sorry to hear this. Sharing the details with our maintenance team for corrective measures in this regard." Another passenger tweeted to the airline that his family few out of Newark on July 18...

Saudi Arabia opened its airspace for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel with the inauguration on Thursday of an Air India route between New Delhi and Tel Aviv. Air India 139 landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport after a flight of over 7-1/2 hours, marking a diplomatic shift for Riyadh that Israel says was fuelled by shared concern over Iranian influence in the region. "This is a really historic day that follows two years of very, very intensive work," Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin said in a radio interview, adding that using Saudi airspace cut travel...

Two pilots have been suspended from duty after their aircraft, carrying 99 passengers, nearly ran out of fuel because they forgot to retract the landing gear after take-off. Air India Flight AI676 was en route to Mumbai from Kolkata on July 22 but was forced to divert to Nagpur when the crew became alarmed by the speed at which the aircraft was losing fuel thanks to the additional drag created by the extended wheels. An unidentified source told the Times of India that the “brand new Airbus A320”, one of the most fuel efficient aircraft in existence, had struggled to...

Now this is what we call a long-haul flight. Air India has recently proposed a new flight route linking the IT hotspots of Bengaluru and San Francisco, located a staggering 8,699 miles (14,000km) apart. If approved, this particular path would be the world's longest non-stop commercial route with an estimated flight time of between 17 to 18 hours.

Two Air India pilots have been grounded by the airline after getting into an apparent physical altercation in the cockpit. The Times of India, which first reported the story on Sunday's incident, quoted an unnamed source saying: "The commander told his co-pilot to take down critical take off figures for the flight. This involves writing critical facts like number of passengers on board, takeoff weight and fuel uptake on a small paper card [trim sheet] that is displayed in front of the pilots for the entire duration of the flight. The co-pilot took offence at this and reportedly beat up...

Investigations underwayAir India said Tuesday an investigation was underway after a passenger found worms in his sandwich mid-flight. The passenger made the discovery during a flight from New York to New Delhi on September 28 on India's struggling flagship carrier. The passenger reported the incident to Air India, but said he did not hear anything back for two weeks, according to the Press Trust of India. "We are investigating the caterer regarding this incident," airline spokesman Prasad Rao told AFP in New Delhi. The spokesman said the airline maintained high standards, including hygiene conditions, adding that this was a "very...

AN Indian co-pilot sent an international passenger jet into a terrifying nosedive when he adjusted his seat and accidentally pushed the control column forward... The captain only saved the Boeing 737 aircraft after using an emergency code to get through the cockpit door and ...When the captain, 39, got back into the cockpit, he shouted, "What are you doing?" The plane fell 610m before the captain got back into the cockpit - and another 1520mt as he struggled with the panicking co-pilot. "There was application of opposite force by pilot and co-pilot on control column,"... Four days earlier, another Air...

The only person convicted in the 1985 Air India bombing that killed 329 people off the coast of Ireland has been found guilty of perjury during the trial. The British Columbia Supreme Court jury found Inderjit Singh Reyat guilty of lying under oath during his testimony in the trial against his alleged co-conspirators in the plot. Ajaib Singh Bagri and Ripudaman Singh Malik were acquitted of first-degree murder and conspiracy in 2005 after a trial lasting almost two years. The maximum sentence for perjury is 14 years in jail, but sentences are more routinely in the range of two to...

A miffed Air India management has slapped a notice on aircraft manufacturing major Boeing demanding compensation of about $ 1 billion (about Rs 4,600 crore) for the persistent delay on deliveries of planes. AI had placed an order for 27 B-787 Dreamliners. According to the original schedule, the first such aircraft was to be delivered in September 2008 followed by one each in each of the subsequent months. By March 2011, Boeing was scheduled to have delivered 18 of these premium aircraft to India’s state-owned carrier. It now appears, however, that the first of these aircraft will arrive only in...

Sujata Survase, the 25-year-old Air India air hostess from Mumbai who lost her life in the Mangalore crash on Saturday, chillingly enough seemed to have had a hunch about the impending tragedy. Her last status update on a social networking site said: "I hate goodbyes but I guess it's time." Sujata, who lived in Andheri, had a BA degree in philosophy from Bhavan's College, Andheri. According to her networking profile, she believed in Buddhist philosophy, loved dancing to hip hop, swore by the television show Friends and hated books, which she mischievously described as "good sleeping pills". The young woman,...

Here is an updated video report on the crash of an Air India Express 737 en route from Dubai to Mangalore, India. Current information puts the death toll at 159, with seven survivors. The plane overshot the runway, and one survivor said he heard a "loud explosion" just before the plane hit the ground. He also said he saw a "hole on the left side of the plane." Indian officials are saying that weather had nothing to do with the crash. They also are sayin they believe the cause was "pilot error." The report shows the first image of a...

All 169 people on board were feared killed when a passenger plane overshot the runway in southern India and crashed early Saturday, an official said.