Actress Krissann Barretto who was traveling to Mumbai with her friends has accused Air India of allegedly ‘harassing her’ for traveling with her pet dog Kiara. Krissann also mentioned that in spite of having all the permissions for her pet, she was accused of “creating nuisance” and that one of the crew members was being “rude” to her.
Krissann talked about it in an interview with Indian Express and shared that she was denied the boarding pass for four hours, and then they yelled at her for unzipping the bag a little bit for her dog to breathe in a so-called “pet-friendly” carrier.
She added, “As soon as I got inside the plane, this guy comes and starts yelling at me that the animal can’t get out of the bag. I asked him to talk nicely. I was with two of my friends. It wasn’t like there were strangers sitting next to me who would have a problem. I opened the zip of the bag just to check on my pet Kiara. She wasn’t out. Even her head wasn’t out. The air hostesses came and asked me to close the bag. They called the same guy. I think this is the routine of getting him to scare people. He said I was creating nuisance,”
The actress also shared a video of a man from the airlines on her Twitter handle. She wrote, “Kept the zip open for her to breathe after an 8-hour road journey and they asked me to get off the flight. They made me wait for 4 hours to get a boarding pass to enter the flight. They were so rude to me as you can see in this video @airindiain.”
Air India, responded to her tweet, saying, “As informed by our Cabin Crew, you had taken out the pet from the bag which is in violation of rules. As per rules, the pet is to be carried in a soft ventilated bag which is not open. Our BLR team was only following the laid down SOP in the matter.”
Well, Barretto still stands her ground and says that she took a stand so that the flight crew doesn’t trouble passengers who travel with pets.