An Air India passenger found a metal blade inside the meal provided to him on flight, an incident that the Tata-owned airline itself has confirmed to have happened.
The incident came to light when the passenger of the Bengaluru-San Francisco Air India AI 175 flight, Mathures Paul, a journalist, took to social media to share his ordeal.
, Mathurs Paul, shared his experience with Air India flight meal on microblogging platform X.
In his social media post, the user shared how he ate the food along with the sharp blade, adding that it was only after chewing the food two three times that he realised there was a sharp metal object in his mouth.
“Air India food can cut like a knife. Hiding in its roasted sweet potato and fig chaat was a metal piece that looked like a blade. I got a feel of it only after chewing the grub for a few seconds. Thankfully, no harm was done. Of course, the blame squarely lies with Air India’s catering service but the incident doesn’t help the image I have of Air India. What if the metal piece was in the food served to a child?,” wrote the user on X, formerly Twitter.
Issuing a statement on the incident, Air India's Chief Customer Experience Officer, Rajesh Dogra said that the foreign object came out of a vegetable processing machine used to cut the raw vegetables.
“Air India confirms that a foreign object was found in the meal of a guest aboard one of our flights. After investigation, it has been identified as coming from the vegetable processing machine used at the facilities of our catering partner. We have worked with our catering partner to strengthen measures to prevent any recurrence, including more frequent checking of the processor especially after chopping of any hard vegetable,” ANI quoted Rajesh Dogra.
In another incident, a business-class passenger of a Tata Group-owned Air India New Delhi-Newark flight has alleged that he was served "uncooked" food by the airline and the seats were dirty, describing the journey as "no less than a nightmare".
In a post on the microblogging platform 'X' on Saturday, passenger Vineeth K said that even though he was getting cheaper fares with Gulf carrier Etihad, he had opted for Air India as it operates a non-stop service to the US.
"Yesterday's flight was no less than a nightmare.. Booked business class (office trip). The seats were not clean, worn off and of the 35 at least 5 seats were not functional," he said.
Alleging that the flight took off after a 25-minute delay, Vineeth said, "After settling for 30 mins post take off, I wanted to get to sleep (3.30 AM) and realised that my seat doesn’t go to a flat bed, reason it's not working..."
A response from Air India on the matter is awaited.
