Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Thursday ordered a probe into an incident of bodybuilder Bobby Kataria smoking on a SpiceJet flight.
A viral video clip on social media showed Kataria, who has 6.3 lakh Instagram followers, smoking a cigarette in one of the SpiceJet plane's middle rows.
Passengers are not allowed to take lighter in the plane. Passengers are also not allowed to smoke in the plane. SpiceJet confirmed that the video is old and was brought to their attention in January 2022, noting that proper action was taken against Bobby at the time. After investigation, the airline had put the passenger on "no flying list" for 15 days in February, it said. The incident occurred aboard a SpiceJet SG706 aircraft coming from Dubai to Delhi.
As per the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) norms, an airline has the power to ban an "unruly" passenger for a certain period of time if he or she violates any rules. When the video of this incident was posted on Twitter on Thursday, Scindia responded: "Investigating it. There will be no tolerance towards such hazardous behaviour." In a statement, SpiceJet said: "This is with reference to a video on social media of a passenger smoking onboard a SpiceJet aircraft.
The matter had been investigated thoroughly in January 2022 when the video was brought to our notice and a complaint had been filed by the airline with the Udyog Vihar Police Station in Gurugram."
The video, the investigation had revealed, was shot on January 20, 2022 while passengers were boarding flight SG 706 scheduled to fly from Dubai to Delhi, it said.
"The matter was referred to the Internal Committee constituted as per the provisions of Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR) on handling of unruly passengers (not consisting of any SpiceJet employee). The said passenger was put on a no flying list by the airline for 15 days in February 2022," the airline said.