Plane Captain Causes Delay After Refusing to Remove Earrings
- 11 years ago
The reason for a recent flight delay? The captain wouldn’t take his earrings out.
Among all the reasons your next flight could be delayed - add one more - your pilot's jewelry. That was the case for an Air India pilot who flat out refused to take his earrings out.
The incident occurred on November 24th. The flight was scheduled to depart from Chennai and head to Colombo, however it was delayed for more than an hour.
The reason for the hiatus was reportedly because the captain wouldn’t take off those earrings, despite a policy that says male pilots cannot wear ear jewelry while conducting flights.
The official rule, according to Air India’s manual noted "Male crew are not permitted to have long hair, long sideburns, intimidating moustache, very long unkempt beards and to affect a ponytail of hair or wear earrings and nose ring in uniform."
The captain, Bhagath Singh was asked by higher ups to remove the earrings, but despite the policy and known rule he would not listen. A verbal battle of wits went back and forth between seniors and Singh for about an hour.
When the authorities finally figured out they weren’t getting anywhere, Singh was given permission to fly with his earrings on.
Among all the reasons your next flight could be delayed - add one more - your pilot's jewelry. That was the case for an Air India pilot who flat out refused to take his earrings out.
The incident occurred on November 24th. The flight was scheduled to depart from Chennai and head to Colombo, however it was delayed for more than an hour.
The reason for the hiatus was reportedly because the captain wouldn’t take off those earrings, despite a policy that says male pilots cannot wear ear jewelry while conducting flights.
The official rule, according to Air India’s manual noted "Male crew are not permitted to have long hair, long sideburns, intimidating moustache, very long unkempt beards and to affect a ponytail of hair or wear earrings and nose ring in uniform."
The captain, Bhagath Singh was asked by higher ups to remove the earrings, but despite the policy and known rule he would not listen. A verbal battle of wits went back and forth between seniors and Singh for about an hour.
When the authorities finally figured out they weren’t getting anywhere, Singh was given permission to fly with his earrings on.