A meeting today on a national no-fly list for unruly passengers was inconclusive as top officials of the ministry of civil aviation debated whether airline crew and ground staff should also be covered in the list. A framework for a no-fly list for unruly passengers is in the last stages of being finalised and a top official had said that the rules would be made public in the first week of July.
The government had last month made its draft rules on no-fly list public and invited stakeholders' comments.
As part of this exercise several people wrote to the ministry calling the proposed rules "lopsided" and demanded airlines should also be held equally accountable for misbehaviour of their crew.
But the meeting today to finalise the rules failed to draw a consensus on expanding the scope of the national-no fly list and to apply it to the airline crew and ground staff as well, said a ministry official.
"Chairing an important meeting to finalise the 'No-fly' list regulations today. We should have the norms in place very soon," Minister of Civil Aviation Ashok Gajapathi Raju had tweeted earlier today.
The draft rules had defined three different categories of misdemeanours which would invite a ban ranging from three months to six months to an indefinite period.
The Centre aims to establish a national no-fly list for unruly passengers in the aftermath of Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad assaulting an Air India staffer onboard a plane in March.
