Kerala artistes deplaned for misconduct

Members of a celebrity cricket team managed by the Association of Malayalam Movie Artistes were on Friday offloaded from a Kochi-Hyderabad flight following alleged misbehaviour with cabin crew. 

The members belonged to the Kerala Strikers team that was heading for Hyderabad on an Indigo flight for their semi-final match on Saturday against Bhojpuri Dabanggs in the ongoing Celebrity Cricket League (CCL) tournament.

The 6E-314 flight scheduled to depart at 1 pm had to abort the take-off and was taken to the bay after some “passengers started misbehaving with the crew”, a statement from Indigo said. The statement said 30 passengers were offloaded. “The airhostesses were displaying safety instructions when there was laughing and applauding by some of the team members. The other passengers raised objection to this behaviour,” Vineet Recriwal, spokesperson of the carrier, told Deccan Herald.

Recriwal said arguments between the crew and the team members led to the aircraft captain getting involved. As the aircraft was taken back to the bay, the captain made an announcement that, again, was responded with laughter and applause by the members.

 The captain was left with no choice but to request security staff to offload the team members along with their baggage, Recriwal said. The spokesperson said there was brief resistance from the team members but they were deplaned after requests from other passengers.