A passenger on an IndiGo, Chennai-Tiruchirappalli flight opened the emergency door on December 10, last year, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) informed through an official communication on Tuesday, adding that it had taken due note of the incident and has ordered a probe into it.

A previous comunication from the DGCA said the flight was bound for Trivandrum, but the carrier later issued a clarification saying it was flying to Tiruchirappalli. In what is the latest in a string of incidents of passenger misconduct, coming on the back of two alleged peeing incidents onboard two Air India (AI) international flights, the passenger, whose identity was yet to be ascertained, opened the emergency door leaving the others onboard the IndiGo flight 6E-7339.

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However, there was no untoward incident as the flight hadn’t yet taken off.
Confirming that the flight regulator had taken note of the incident, a senior DGCA official told ANI, “The incident was duly reported. It appears that the passenger opened the RH emergency exit door by mistake while the aircraft was still on the ground. The crew moved in swiftly and all appropriate action to restore airworthiness such as reinstalling the door, pressurisation check was carried out before the flight was cleared for departure. No safety protocol was compromised with.”

In an earlier incident on Novmber 26 last year, Shankar Mishra, a passenger on a business-class flight from New York to New Delhi allegedly relieved himself on a 70-year-old woman passenger in an inebriated state.

Delhi Police registered an FIR against the passenger on January 4 on a complaint by the elderly passenger. The case was filed under IPC sections 354, 509, and 510 and Section 23 of the Indian Aircraft Act.

Amid a huge public outcry over the incident, US-based financial services company Wells Fargo, where Mishra worked, terminated his contract.
He was eventually apprehended from Bengaluru.