Two Supreme Court judges, Justices Surya Kant and KV Viswanathan, witnessed mid-air chaos involving drunk passengers during a recent flight the two had taken from Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore.

Justice Viswanathan narrated the experience in court while hearing a plea seeking directions to deal with unruly passengers.

The top court judge had asked how a check is kept on passengers who get drunk on a flight.

“We had a recent experience. Me and brother Justice Surya Kant sitting in a flight…two passengers were fully drunk – one got into the washroom (and) slept off… one outside with the vomit bag given by the all-women lady crew. Half an hour, 35 minutes… they could not open even with the master key because it was an all-women lady crew…they requested a male co-passenger and he opened… then woke him up and got him out,” Justice Vishwanathan was quoted as saying by a Live Law report.

What exactly went down

According to an NDTV report, the two apex court judges sat in the front row of the flight, near the gallery area and the lavatory. Justices Vishwanathan and Kant sat separately to prepare for the cases they had lined up before them in the top court the next morning.

Around 30 minutes after take off, some passengers began complaining about a man occupying the washroom for around half an hour, saying that he was not opening the door despite repeated knocking.

At this time, another male passenger walked towards the gallery area and began puking into a vomit bag, also known as an air sickness bag.

The two judges and the rest of the fliers were all left to watch the troubled sight.

The cabin crew knocked several times on the lavatory door but got no response. Though the all-women crew had a master key to that door, they were hesitant to use it as they did not know the condition of the male passenger.

Subsequently, they requested another male flier to open the door, only to find the passenger drunk and asleep inside the lavatory.

The drunk passenger was helped out of the restroom and brought back to his seat. In the meanwhile, it was discovered that the man who was puking near the washroom was also drunk, NDTV reported.

All this chaos was witnessed by the two Supreme Court judges from the plane’s front row.

A top court bench of Justices KV Vishwanathan and BR Gavai heard the unruly passenger conduct plea, filed by a 73-year-old woman passenger who was urinated upon by a drunk co-passenger during an Air India flight from New York to Delhi in November 2022.

The bench asked the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to come up with “creative” suggestions to tackle the issue faced on such accounts.

While noting that entry of intoxicated passengers can be controlled, the SC bench asked how can fliers be controlled from getting inebriated to such levels inside the flight.