No-fly list has cut down unruly flyers: Jayant Sinha.

Johnson Cherian.

Incidents involving unruly passengers have seen a dramatic drop ever since the government announced rules for a national no-fly list, according to Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha.

“If you remember, before the no-fly list was brought out there were a lot of incidents where people were misbehaving on aircraft. But, once we issued a whole set of regulations, the number of incidents dropped dramatically. People recognise now that if you compromise safety onboard an aircraft, we will not take it lightly and the consequences are going to be severe for them,” Mr. Sinha told The Hindu in an interview.

Last year, the Ministry of Civil Aviation unveiled the first-ever set of guidelines imposing a ban on flying, ranging from three months up to a lifetime, on passengers found guilty of misbehaving inside a plane.

So far, only one person — Mumbai-based jeweller Birju Kishore Salla — has been put on the no-fly list and barred from flying for five years by Jet Airways after he left a hijack message in the lavatory of a flight from Mumbai to Delhi last October.

The Minister informed Parliament last July, over a period of 18 months since 2016 there had been 455 cases of unruly passengers on various Indian airlines.

The domestic airlines in the country collectively urged the government for a no-fly list in the country after an incident in March last year involving Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad who hit an Air India staffer with a slipper 25 times for being denied a business class seat in an all-economy plane.

Mr. Sinha also said the government was committed to disinvestment of Air India and appropriate steps would be taken depending on the market circumstances and the industry dynamics.

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