A senior journalist and managing director narrowly escaped death on board an Air India flight from Delhi to Vadodara on September 15, 2025, after choking on a piece of plastic hidden inside an in-flight snack.
A senior journalist and managing director narrowly escaped death on board an Air India flight from Delhi to Vadodara on September 15, 2025, after choking on a piece of plastic hidden inside an in-flight snack. What could have ended in tragedy, he says, turned into a chilling lesson on airline negligence, protocol obsession, and the absence of basic compassion at 30,000 feet.
“I AM ALIVE WITH GOD’S GRACE OR I WOULD BE DEAD IN FLIGHT AT VADODARA AIRPORT,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post, recounting the horror that unfolded in seat 27F of the Airbus A320.
What began as a routine bite into a standard pastry mid-flight turned catastrophic when a “stiff, plastic thread-like clip”—likely from careless packaging—lodged in his throat. “It was like a dagger in my airway. I couldn’t breathe. Panic surged as my chest tightened, and I felt the edges of unconsciousness creeping in, my vision starting to blur,” he recalled.
At that exact moment, the pilot announced the final descent into Vadodara’s H.H. Maharaja Sayaji Rao Gaikwad Airport, forcing passengers into their seats under DGCA’s landing rules. For the journalist, the window seat became a suffocating prison.
Desperately signaling for help, he claims the cabin crew dismissed his distress. “They snapped at me to stay seated, their voices sharp with irritation, dismissing my obvious distress as if it were a mere inconvenience. They didn’t even pause to consider that I was choking, that my life was slipping away,” he wrote.
For ten agonizing minutes, he battled for breath, his consciousness fading, until the aircraft finally touched down. Rushing toward the lavatory to forcefully eject the object, he says he was blocked by another crew member, who barked about post-landing rules. With folded hands, he silently begged to pass, and only then was he allowed to stumble into the washroom—where he vomited and expelled the plastic clip.
“I survived, but just barely,” he stated, calling the episode not just a medical emergency but a “failure of safety, empathy, and basic human decency.”
But the trauma didn’t end there. After lodging a complaint with Air India, he claims the airline responded with a message: “Be patient.” No apology, no acknowledgment of the ordeal. “Is this hospitality, professionalism, or humanity? I believe that this stay patient was an indirect way to ask me not [to share] this with the #media. No one should endure this nightmare,” he added.
For the journalist, survival was by divine grace—but he warns, “No one should endure what I did.”