A Thai AirAsia flight from India to Thailand veered into chaos when several Indian passengers ignored cabin crew and turned the plane’s aisle into a party zone.
Groups of men can be seen standing in the aisle, talking loudly, snacking, and disregarding flight attendant pleas to remain seated. The video’s caption read that such actions “bring a bad name to the country.”
“Money doesn’t get you class!”
“We should never defend such behaviour. It tarnishes India’s image globally.”
“This is why Bharat remains a third-world country. Stop blaming the government.”
“They’ve turned the flight into a train or bus. This plane hasn’t even landed, and it’s already chaos!”
Cabin crew kept asking passengers to return to their seats, but were ignored. The airline did not threaten more serious action.
The clips seem to have touched a nerve in India as that country comes into development. In China we occasionally see first-time flyers behave inappropriately, thinking the lavatory is the exit and throwing coins in the plane’s engines for luck. It’s a ‘fish out of water’ story that makes those that have already left the water uncomfortable.
Yet here in the United States the ‘current thing’ in political discourse has focused on the indispensability of Indian workers to tech. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance is married into an Indian family and Indian-Americans currently or in the recent past have served as CEOs of Microsoft; Google; Chanel; Abobe; Pepsi; IBM; Arista Networks; and Novartis. Granted Starbucks didn’t turn out as well and IBM is a mess. But clearly the U.S. is benefiting from Indian outmigration.
(HT: Loyalty Lobby)
“ The video’s caption read that such actions “bring a bad name to the country.”
Hate to break it to you but your country already has a crap reputation. Just below that of the USA.
While I’d be annoyed by them, too, I don’t see the seatbelt sign turned on. I don’t know if they were doing anything against the airline regulations or policies, so all FAs could do was to plead?
These people often leave their seats soon as the plane touches down. Why in such a hurry? Not only it takes minimum 5 minutes to taxi, then another 5 minutes to connect the gate bridge, but also it could be dangerous especially with overhead bins open. They often take double than that minimum 10 min.
It’s always these male Indian travelers making troubles in Thailand. Remember the theft incident at one of bkk lounges a few months ago?
Cut the communication capabilities from India and fraud would decrease significantly and customer service would improve inversely. You would also have to get the Philippines.
I’ve seen far worse behavior. Flew once from Seoul to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The vast majority of passengers were Uzbek migrant workers who’d just finished up a six month work stint in South Korean. The rowdy passengers completely overwhelmed the female Asiana Airlines flight attendants. The open business class seats were grabbed by inebriated passengers who refused to move back to economy; the passengers basically made the flight’s atmosphere akin to a rowdy bar. Was completely out of control.
I hope that this situation doesn’t spread to other flights. AirAsia sells exit row seats as well as front seats for more money as part of their revenue strategy. I have been spending the extra cash to sit in exit row seats when I fly Thai AirAsia so my knees have enough room. Men that look Indian and cannot speak Thai often try to self upgrade to the mostly empty exit row seats but the flight attendants force them to return to their original seats. I am sure that the company doesn’t want to crack down too much on the Indian passengers because they are an important source of revenue and if all were to quit flying AirAsia flights or many were banned, it would possibly cause financial troubles.
MAGA civil war, anyone? With Gary’s final comment here (“But clearly the US is benefiting from Indian immigration”), that sure seems to echo the current situation (Elon wanting to hire foreign tech workers vs. the white, Christian nationalist base wanting to genocide everyone who isn’t them). I love to see it. “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
It’s not just that bad behavior is bad, let’s scapegoat and generalize an entire ethnicity. Cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool. This always ends well for everyone.
Again, please fight me, I’m here to watch it all burn down.
Being a first time flyer is no excuse. We don’t see this happen with inexperienced passengers from say, Switzerland, Japan, Argentina, Canada, Namibia, NZ, etc.
It’s simply a cultural problem. Not every person from a given country but enough that it’s not just an occasional isolated individual.
Maybe certain countries need a public education campaign if they don’t want their travelers embarrassing the country.
Indian airports and flights to and from India increasingly come across the same kind of issues encountered at crazy busy Indian train/bus stations and on Indian trains/buses. The flying buses have been democratized, but manners have gone the other way in the country — and the vulgar behavior even shows way more nowadays with the right-wing Indian government/politicians who are more vulgar than ever.
About a year ago I was flying from Dubai to Varanasi, India on an Air India flight. As soon as the planes wheels touched the tarmac, half of the passengers stood to their feet and started pulling out carry-on items. I had never seen anything like that before, and I haven’t since.
Indian men are the worst people on the planet.
My sister was on a flight that landed a bit late in Denver. So half the plane stood up and started getting things out of bins. The pilot got cut off by a ground vehicle and had to slam on the brakes. Everyone that was up went down.
Rowdiness and indecencies are on the rise. Only dull headed people behave this way. Shame on them.
This was a plane full of indians likely on a holiday trip unused to air travel.
No worse than soccer fans from UK – they are a lot more drunk and dangerous.
No sample is representative of a country – otherwise we should have many more posts from you Gary, about people bringing a bad name to the US
– putting their feet up
– bringing dogs for “emotional support”
– asking for wheel chairs on Southwest
– not wearing clothes
– etc etc
Indians travellers can only be deciplined through “DANDA”. The airline should call in police and round them to when they reach Bangkok. They shout and fight in hotels where they stay, bringing bad name to the country. The Thai people already have a very negative image of Indians as tailors, money landers and crooks. Very sad.
I had an Indian friend in college and I have had coworkers who were Indian-American. I suspect that none of the people I knew would behave the way described in this article. The people I knew were clever and courteous. I enjoyed talking with them when we had a bit of free time.
I have also been to the market of the Phahurat district of Bangkok buying cloth and luggage. Good merchants. On the edge of the district I changed some USD to Baht for a good rate at a shop. I talked with the Indian-Thai man there. He said that his family had immigrated to the Miami area of the USA and then had immigrated to Bangkok later. He said that the business opportunities in Bangkok were greater than those in Miami.
Also in Bangkok I had marriage documents translated into English by an Indian-Thai professional translator. Perfect translations and he also knew all of the various stamps on the documents so he could even translate correctly the ones not inked correctly.
Land the plane at the nearest suitable airport and have everyone taken off in handcuffs.