Air India flight
[Representational image]Creative commons

The Maharaja found himself in an embarrassing situation on Wednesday, after an Air India passenger posted a picture on Twitter showing cockroaches crawling in the food plates at the airliner's business class lounge in New Delhi. 

The Air India was quick to offer an apology. But the damage has already been done. 

"Dear @airindiain cockroaches on food plates at your Delhi Lounge for business and first class passengers. Disgusting," tweeted the passenger.

The picture posted by the female passenger immediately went viral on the social media and Air India issued an apology over the inconvenience caused. "Ma'am we have alerted the agency managing lounge at T3. Necessary corrective measures are being taken immediately. We deeply apologise for this incident," read Air India's official twitter handle.

An airline source said that Air India subsidiary Hotel Corporation of India, which manages Centaur group of hotels, provides catering services at its lounge, Indian Express reported.

Well, this is definitely not the first such incident where caterers owned by state governments have delivered a pathetic service. Another such incident was reported by TOI in November where a passenger traveling to Chicago posted pictures of a dead cockroach he claimed to have found in meal served on-board.

Public sector airliner is not alone in this. On December 9,  travel blogger Manjulika Pramod complained on Twitter that she was served a live cockroach with her food while travelling on the Lucknow-Delhi Shatabdi Express train.