A blogger who posts as komil_vlogs said a Centrum Air flight attendant refused to switch to Uzbek when he asked her to, and that he was then barred from flight C6468 from Samara to Tashkent on Oct. 5. The airline has responded to his account.

In a video the blogger posted, the attendant does not switch to Uzbek and, speaking in Russian, tells him to switch off his camera.

"Centrum Air is an airline created and developing in multinational Uzbekistan. All our flight attendants speak Uzbek, Russian and English and communicate with passengers in the language they prefer," the carrier's press service said. Its statement did not address the claim that the attendant refused to switch languages.

The airline said the passenger "behaved aggressively toward the flight attendant, made demands in a rude manner, insulted the employee and obstructed her work while passengers were boarding."

"Such behavior could have threatened safety and order on board, so the aircraft captain decided not to allow the passenger to fly. We consider this decision fully justified," Centrum Air said.

"All the circumstances of the incident have been documented. The airline is considering turning to law enforcement over this citizen's actions," the company added.

The blogger later said he had bought a ticket to Moscow, from where he would fly to Tashkent or Samarkand. He said he would contact the embassy of Uzbekistan in Russia and seek justice after returning home.

The blogger implied that it is a matter of basic respect: passengers in Uzbekistan should be able to expect service in Uzbek when the approach in Uzbek, particularly on an airline based in the country.

Uzbek is the state language of Uzbekistan, and the law requires information about goods and services to be given to consumers in it. Compliance in the services sector has been questioned before. Last year, the Competition Committee carried out inspections after public complaints that restaurants and cafes were serving customers in foreign languages and neglecting Uzbek. In several cases, menus had no Uzbek version, and the businesses later added one. The latest incident has revived the debate over how consistently the state language law is applied in public-facing services.