Bombay HC to DGCA, BA

Asserting that an effective mechanism to ease senior citizens’ air travel needs to be framed and implemented, Bombay high court has directed Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to list by April 21 the measures it proposes to undertake to address such flyers’ concerns.

“Miseries of the senior citizens who undertake air travel deserve to be addressed by all the stakeholders with utmost promptness,” said a bench of Justices Girish Kulkarni and Advait Sethna on April 7 when an 81-year-old woman who flew from Colombo said she was forced to give up her wheelchair for her daughter, who has arthritis, after they were given only one mobility aid on landing in Mumbai in Sept 2023.

HC felt that the “approach of the aviation companies, the airport operators, and DGCA… needs to be service-oriented, satisfying the ideal standards of service being offered rather than complaint-centric”. “The least which can be expected is that such issues ought not to be taken to the courts and litigated,” it said.

HC was hearing two petitions, one by the mother-daughter south Mumbai duo and the other by a 53-year-old US resident with a cardiac condition, who came to India on a separate flight. The petitioner with arthritis said the cabin crew pressured her to walk down a steep ramp, which she was unable to, and her family “went from pillar to post to arrange for wheelchairs,” finally managing to get one an hour later. Seeing her daughter in pain, her mother gave her the wheelchair and was “thus forced to walk down”. The daughter said she was aggrieved that her “pain and suffering have been equated to a mere inconvenience that can be remedied by offering her a service voucher of Rs 500”. “There is no response from DGCA, whatsoever,” HC was informed.

HC said DGCA and other authorities need to be keep in mind the “travel requirements of senior citizens, patients, and persons with medical conditions”. Litigation over such requirements is not in the interest of either aviation companies or passengers, it said. DGCA has a “parental role in the implementation of rules and the sensitivity any situation may demand, and it would be its obligation to bring about a systematic regime to be implemented by the aviation companies”, it said in its order.

There cannot be any laxity in implementing the relevant rules, said HC after observing that it had a “meaningful discussion on the issues involved” with the petitioners’ lawyer, Aseem Naphade, Leena Patil for the Centre, airlines’ counsel Zal Andhyarujina, and advocates Farid Karachiwala and Shoma Maitra for Mumbai airport.