A 66-year-old male passenger reportedly on a Hawaiian Airlines flight asked for a blanket as he was feeling cold. When the crew demanded a fee of $ 12 for the blanket, an altercation started. At one stage, the passenger made some unruly statement which the captain considered as a threat and immediately diverted the plane to Los Angeles. The police didn’t however arrest the passenger as his statement was not fallen into the volume of crime.Well, I think the airlines should keep enough number of in-flight blankets so that they could supply blankets to all those passengers in need. A few months back when I was returning Dhaka from Delhi by a Jet airways flight, my ailing sister suddenly felt severe cold and she was shivering. When I requested the crew members for a blanket, they tried their best to supply one but failed as all the blankets available to them were distributed among other passengers. It’s quite natural to get cold on flight and therefore sufficient number of blankets should be available to help the passengers, particularly those sick.
Meanwhile, as the number of air passengers increased in these days, airlines take less care for the comfort of the passengers, particularly in the economy class. I can remember, once when I travelled to Tokyo from Bangkok by a Thai Airways flight late in the night, I couldn’t notice when I got asleep. In the morning when I wake up I found blankets covering me, perhaps some crew members had given it finding me in cold. Fortunately I was travelling on first class. I got such treatment in business class as well. But airlines should not ignore the fact that bulk of the air-passenger travels in the economy class and contributes to the lion share of an airline’s earning. Hence, the airlines should pay more attention to the welfare and comfort of the majority passengers.
Yours truly,
Prof. M Zahidul Haque
Department of Agricultural Extension & Information System
Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University
Dhaka.
