Garuda Indonesia Bans In-Flight Photos After Two Video Bloggers Mock Its Handwritten Menu

airlines-with-inflight-wifi — More and more airlines are adding in-flight Wi-Fi services. eDreams

A video review of Garuda Indonesia by video bloggers has left the airlines red-faced. The video bloggers, Rius Vernandes and Elwiyana Monica were on the airline Saturday from Sydney to Bali Denpasar in the business-class cabin when they made the video.

The duo posted the video on their YouTube channel that has about 50,000 subscribers. They also posted a photograph of the handwritten menu captioned, "The menu is still being printed sir." This led to bad publicity of the airline and ridicule for serving in-flight meals in business-class from HokBen, a Japanese fastfood chain.

In the video, according to new.com.au, Rius says, “the passengers in front of me were given a menu like this. I was confused why we were given such a menu.” The blogger talks to other passengers on the flight and highlights the lack of menus and wine.

“The wine ran out, champagne, all wine. You come on a flight like this, business-class, you expect nice wine,” Paul and Christian, two Australian travellers said. Rius conludes the video saying that the airline staff are very embarrassed. “There are 40 business-class seats and they had three bottles of champagne, that’s disappointing. Would we go with Garuda again? I would look at other airlines,” he said.

The two bloggers are likely to face defamation charges under Indonesia’s strict electronic transactions laws. According to the Indonesian law, they could face fines up to $80,000 or six months imprisonment.

Moreover, the duo made the issue worse by publishing the airline’s internal note that outlined a ban on in-flight photography. And this was widely mocked on social media. According to the Guardian, Garuda announced it was banning passengers and flight crew from taking in-flight photos and videos, as per the memo that was circulated on July 14 asking passengers to not take images, be it photos, videos or document all activities during a flight.

In a separate press release, Garuda said “passengers can still take pictures of personal interests such as taking selfie pictures while not disturbing the comfort or harming other passengers.”

This incident has left passengers in uncertainty about taking in-flight selfies.