A cancer patient on New York-bound flight deboarded for seeking help with hand bag

"They were collective in their decision to deboard me," a cancer patient, who was offloaded from New York-bound flight.

New Delhi, Feb 05: A woman traveller, a cancer patient, was denied help when she sought help from a flight attendant and offloaded from a New York-bound flight of American Airlines. The incident occurred at Delhi airport on January 30.

The US-based traveller Meenakshi Sengupta has filed a complaint against the flight attendant for "mistreating her and deboarding her off the aircraft wrongfully when asked for assistance for a bag weighing more than 5 pounds", The Times of India reported.

In her complaint to Delhi Police and the Civil Air, the cancer patient, who recently underwent a surgery recently, said that the airline attended refused to give wheelchair assistance. "I was also wearing a brace which was visible to everyone and they would know that I have some discomfort...because I CANNOT carry any weight in my hands at all and I'm weak from the surgery and don't need to strain myself by walking a lot," ANI quoted her as saying.

However, the ground staff was very supportive and helped her to get into the aircraft while putting her handbag on the side of the seat, she said. "Once inside the flight, I had a conversation with the air hostess and I explained my health condition to them...None of them mentioned about putting my handbag away. After the flight was about to take off, cabin lights were dimmed. At that time an air hostess came to put my hand bag in the overhead compartment. I requested her to help me put it but she refused to do so and told me it's not her job to do it," she added.

Despite her repeated request for help, they refused to assist her and asked her to do it on her own. "She was extremely rude and arrogant with her words," Sengupta claimed. Her attempts to bring the issue to the aircraft members' notice did not make any difference as they were "largely indifferent", saying they do not want to interfere in it,

"They said that if I'm so uncomfortable I should just de-board the flight. They were collective in their decision to deboard me," Sengupta said.

"We will seek a report and look into this. We do not approve of insensitivity," Arun Kumar, DG, Directorate General of Civil Aviation, told The Times of India while reacting to the issue.

What the Airlines Said?

American Airlines, in a statement, said that the Airline's Relations Team has reached out to the customer to refund the unused portion of their ticket. "On January 30, prior to the departure of American Airlines flight 293 from Delhi (DEL) to New York (JFK), a disruptive customer was removed from the aircraft for failure to follow crew member instructions. Our Customer Relations team has reached out to the customer to refund the unused portion of their ticket," the statement said.