Chennai: Spice Jet Airhostess protested at Chennai Airport against airline security personnel over allegedly strip searching them after de-boarding their flights.
The Air hostess alleged that they were subjected to an inappropriate touch by airline women personnel who suspected them of swindling cash collected from passengers on board for the food services. The crew members were also not permitted to use washrooms immediately after de-boarding their flights.
Two Spice Jet flights were late by an hour due to the crew protest at Chennai Airport, DC reports. “We air hostesses are stripped naked over the last three days and women personnel touch us inappropriately,” an air hostess told NDTV. Another crew member was heard saying, “Someone touched me inappropriately, made me feel very uncomfortable. I was naked.”
Furious over airline security personnel’s behavior towards the crew, the women in their written complaints to the SpiceJet management, asked the management if it was the airline’s policy “to remove sanitary pad and touch private parts”.
“We cabin crew are hired majorly for safety reasons of the fellow passengers but what about our respect and safety? We talk about rape and molestation, is this any less?” read another woman’s complaint. “On informing the base official that I wasn’t comfortable and I’m on my menses she still checked my panty; they pressed my breasts. I’ve lost my self-respect… Cabin crew is the brand ambassador. We are humiliated as if we have done some robbery,” said another complainant.
Responding to the complaints raised by Spicejet crew members, senior vice president of Spice Jet Kamal Hingorani, in an email said the security personnel was conducting the strict action on suspicion of crew members swindling money and airline materials.
“We have therefore been compelled to carry out spot checks, which in any case is a company policy. It is in all our interests that the ‘black sheep’ amongst us is identified and removed so that honest employees are not blamed,” Kamal Hingorani said in the mail.