Sunday, October 13, 2013

Live maggots found in Air India in-flight meals

 

 The unsavory truth about in-flight meals. Maggots are high in protein and considered a delicacy in some countries, but somehow Air India passengers from New York to New Delhi found little comfort when live maggots were discovered in their in-flight meal.

The airline, however, has assured marked improvement in its in-flight service. Air India spokesperson too has promised a response from the catering division in United States.

Ravi Uppal, traveling to Delhi to celebrate Dussehra said, “On Flight AI-102 on September 28, as I was coming from New York, the sandwiches served to me was entirely infested with maggots. I had consumed them when I saw something crawling in my tray and I realized that the tray was full of maggots. I was in a state of shock for the next few minutes. I called the stewardess. She was equally shocked and took away the tray. Within the next half an hour, I had spoken to the entire staff of the aircraft, including the captain, about the contaminated food.”

Uppal, who works as a manager with a private company, added that he was outraged to find out that it was not just him who was served contaminated food onboard.

“Gradually I found out that another fellow passenger, Vaibhav Saha, made a similar complaint to the airline’s staff. The only difference was that he was able to realized that the tray on which he was served his order had maggots before he started eating and had not consumed the contaminated food,” expounded Uppal, who managed to click pictures of the moldy sandwiches and recorded the entire event.

Uppal made a formal complaint to the airline authorities after touching down at Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport.

He rued that the incident has deeply traumatized him as he is a frequent flyer with the airline and has his return tickets pre-booked on the same airline.

“In the aftermath of the disturbing event, I advised my sister traveling some weeks later with her baby not to consume any food on the flight. However, even after a formal complaint to authorities, the airline has been unable to take speedy action. The international standards claimed by it are farcical,” he added. He added that the airline has just been giving fake assurances. In the e-mail he received from the airline’s General Manager, Commercial,

TS Sanjiv Kumar on October 10, he has been told, “taking serious cognizance of your complaint, the issue was taken up with our catering department who have advised us that the matter was taken up very strongly with our caterers in the USA. A strict warning letter has been issued to avoid such recurrence; the caterers, however, have been suitably penalized.”


Source:  http://www.dailypioneer.com

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