A day after a video emerged of the staff of IndiGo airlines seeming to assault and manhandling a passenger, national carrier Air India took a potshot at the private airline without naming it.
Air India released two advertisements on its Twitter page on Wednesday evening. One read, “Unbeatable service”. The other, with the tagline “We raise our hands only to say Namaste”, was later taken down.
The ads were evidently a response to the video that spread widely on Tuesday that seemed to show an IndiGo passenger, 53-year-old Rajeev Katiyal, being assaulted after arriving in New Delhi from Chennai on October 15. The video broadcast on Times Now showed two IndiGo ground staff wrestling with the agitated passenger after stopping him from boarding the shuttle bus that takes passengers from the tarmac to the terminals.
Katiyal told the television channel that he had been standing in the shade of the plane because it was a hot day, but the ground staff rudely told him to move. The video shows them pushing him to the ground and punching him.
Earlier in the day, another advertisement, purportedly released by Jet Airways, also mocked IndiGo. It was shared widely on social media.
However, Jet Airways issued a statement saying that they had not released it.
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