A passenger who took an Air India flight from Delhi to New York on September 17 has complained that she found a cockroach in one of the meals served by the airline, and consequently she and her two-year-old toddler came down with food poisoning. Reacting to the incident, Air India said that it is “concerned” and the matter has been taken up with the caterer for investigation.
“Air India works with reputed caterers who supply to leading airlines globally and have stringent SOPs (standard operating procedures) and multiple checks to ensure quality of meals served to our guests. We are concerned about the experience of the customer in the said instance and have taken it up with our catering service provider to investigate it further. We will take necessary actions to prevent any recurrence of such instances in future,” an Air India spokesperson said.
The passenger—Suyesha Savant—took to social media platforms Instagram and X (formerly Twitter), posting videos and pictures of the omelette served to her in breakfast upon departure from Delhi. The videos and pictures show what appears to be an insect in the omelette. Savant is a journalist with a television news channel, per her social media profiles.
“…I found a cockroach in the omelette. I had already finished more than 2/3rd of the meal portion, and what was unimaginably worse was that I was feeding my 2 yr old toddler the same omelette. I felt sick to my pit. Not surprisingly, both of us suffered from food poisoning right at the start of our trip,” Savant posted on Instagram.
Found a cockroach in the omelette served to me on the @airindia flight from Delhi to New York. My 2 year old finished more than half of it with me when we found this. Suffered from food poisoning as a result. @DGCAIndia @RamMNK pic.twitter.com/1Eyc3wt3Xw
— Suyesha Savant (@suyeshasavant) September 28, 2024
“Please beware!! My family and I have always been loyal to Air India (despite its shortcomings) for a variety of reasons, until this day when Air India really pushed us over the edge. We are now dreading our return flight, and safe to say, we are NOT looking forward to it!” she added in the post, in which Air India, aviation catering service provider TajSATS, and Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu were also tagged. In a similar post on X, Savant also tagged aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
This is the second incident of a potentially dangerous foreign object being discovered by passengers in meals served on Air India flights over the past four months. In June, a passenger flying to San Francisco from Bengaluru on an Air India flight had found a blade-like metal piece in one of the meals served to him. A few days later, the Tata group airline confirmed the presence of the object, and said that it was from the vegetable processing machine used at the facilities of its catering partner.