Cabin crew stepped in quickly to calm passengers after a man stripped naked in mid-flight and started marching down the aisle.
The man’s seemingly inexplicable behaviour shocked passengers on an Air India Express flight from Dubai to Lucknow, Dubai publication Khaleej Times reported.
The incident happened on flight IX-194, which was carrying over 150 passengers.
Cabin crew “took control of the situation” by escorting the passenger back to his seat and wrapping him in a blanket, thus helping to “pacify the agitated travellers”, the report stated.
Two cabin crewmembers restrained the naked man, keeping him seated and wrapped in his blanket till the flight landed at Lucknow airport at 12.05pm.
A photo on Twitter shows a man in a blanket sitting in an aircraft seat.
https://twitter.com/ani_digital/status/1079042743102590980/
The man’s motives were unclear. Members of an ascetic Indian Hindu sect, the saddhu, sometimes go naked in public, but in this case the passenger was fully clothed when he boarded the plane in Dubai.
A clue was given by the Times of India, which named the man as Surendra and said he was suffering “mental trauma” after alleged workplace harassment in Dubai by his supervisor and co-workers, all Pakistanis. He said his Pakistani colleagues had constantly harassed him, as the sole Indian in the workforce.
“Surendra thought that the flight would land in Pakistan and therefore he stripped in protest,” a Central Industrial Security Force official told the Times of India.
Asian News International (ANI), a major Indian news agency based in New Delhi, reported that the flight captain ordered the man handed over to airline security at Lucknow airport “where investigation is underway”.
The plane departed as scheduled two hours later, operating the return leg from Lucknow to Dubai.
Written by Peter Needham
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