A routine flight from Jaipur to Bengaluru took a disturbing and unusual turn after a passenger attempted to breach an airplane’s safety door mid-flight. According to the cabin crew of IndiGo‘s Flight 6E 373, 26-year-old Utkarsh Gautam began trying to force his way through the airplane’s safety door. He was quickly stopped by crew members who said that he threatened and verbally abused them before being labeled as an unruly passenger.
By the time the flight arrived in Bengaluru (India) from London (UK), the authorities had already alerted the airport employees who took over processing Gautam (the subject of this case) into the airport at Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru, where he was handled by Kempegowda International Airport Police (KIA police) who had also filed an NC (non-cognisable) report at KIA police station after an airline representative made a statement before filing a complaint. Officers stated that due to the amount of time involved in processing Gautam (approximately three hours to complete all the paperwork to process him), he did not get out of their custody until after an officer from KIA police had obtained a statement from him, and KIA police had completed their investigation into the circumstances regarding the incident involving Gautam. Gautam and a friend returned to Jaipur on a flight back on board a plane with an escort from Gautam’s father.
The incident did not stop at the airport. Authorities indicated Gautam made posts, which were both abusive and derogatory about Bengaluru City Police, claiming (by way of his own inaccurate assertions) that he was arrested without cause and beaten at KIA the same night he fled the airport, the same night that police arrested him. Gautam tagged Prime Minister Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Congress Leader Rahul Gandhi, Bengaluru City Police in these posts. After this, another case was opened against Gautam for creating public mischief/defamation against Bengaluru City Police as well as making false and misleading statements.
What adds another level of complexity to this case is the interrelationship between Gautam’s emotional crisis, public disorder/community unrest, aviation security issues. Gautam’s family informed police that prior to his flight to Bengaluru, he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had received medical assistance for approximately one year. In addition, police indicated that Gautam previously worked in London and at several well-known companies in India, but has been unemployed due to his condition since he returned to India. After returning to Jaipur from Bengaluru, Gautam left the house without telling his family and made postings on social media. As a result of these postings by Gautam, Police requested that Gautam be returned from Jaipur to Bengaluru to further investigate the case.
The aviation industry has always treated door-related incidents as critical because the exits of aircraft are not just normal panels but rather they are built with safety features that prevent them from being opened by accident during the flight. According to the FAA, any door opening system must have designs that safeguard against the door from opening during flight and that cabin pressure is not considered a valid way of safeguarding these systems. In short, today’s aircraft doors are designed to be extremely resistant to being opened while in the air; however, there will still be safety and security concerns with any attempt to tamper with them.
For the Bengaluru police, the case now is about more than one passenger’s actions aboard a single flight. They are conducting a two-part investigation: the initial allegations of a mid-air breach of discipline, and then there was a digital campaign that allegedly attempted to distort the facts of the incident once the flight had landed. Within a period of less than 24 hours the flight from Jaipur to Bengaluru became a legal, reputational, and aviation-security o2054problem spanning multiple jurisdictions and over a time of approximately five hours.
