The Tatas-owned Air India, accused of inadequate response after a drunken flyer allegedly urinated on a female co-passenger, has de-rostered a pilot and four cabin crew members and is reviewing its policies, including the in-flight serving of alcohol, its CEO said on Saturday.

Expressing regret, Campbell Wilson said in a statement that the airline could have handled the matter better.

“Air India is deeply concerned about the in-flight instances where customers have suffered due to the condemnable acts of their co-passengers on our aircraft. We regret and are pained about these experiences,” he said.

“Air India acknowledges that it could have handled these matters better, both in the air and on the ground and is committed to taking action.”

The full-service airline, which came into the Tatas fold in January 2022, has faced intense backlash for failing to immediately report the unruly passenger to law enforcement, and for making the woman passenger sit with him for a resolution though she wanted to press charges against him.

The incident occurred on Flight AI102, operating between New York and Delhi, on November 26.

Campbell said that while four cabin crew members and a pilot had been issued with showcause notices and de-rostered pending investigation, the airline was holding internal investigations to ascertain any lapses by other staff.

Further, Air India is investigating matters such as the serving of alcohol on flights, the handling of the incident, the registration of complaints on board, and grievance handling.

Campbell said that as a “responsible airline brand”, the carrier had started a comprehensive education programme to strengthen crews’ awareness of and compliance with policies on the handling of such incidents and unruly passengers.

Air India is also reviewing the frequency of meetings of its “internal committee”, prescribed by aviation regulator DGCA and tasked with assessing incidents so that cases are assessed and decisions reached in a timely manner.

“To improve the robustness of its legacy incident reporting processes, which are presently paper-based and manual, Air India signed a Letter of Intent in December 2022 to acquire a licence for the market-leading provider of incident management software, Coruson,” Campbell said.

“In addition to this stateof-the-art software, the airline is also in the process of deploying iPads to pilots and senior cabin crew. When used together, crew will be able to enter voyage and incident reports electronically, which will then be rapidly and automatically routed to relevant parties including, as required, the regulator.”

Air India, Campbell said, continues to provide support to affected passengers and ensure their well-being. He added that after receiving the complaint on November 27 about the previous day’s incident, Air India began corresponding with the affected passenger’s family on November 30.