Pilots accused of streaming video from hidden camera in aircraft toilet
A flight attendant has filed a lawsuit against Southwest Airlines, alleging pilots streamed video from a camera hidden in a bathroom on one of the carrier’s jets.
Renee Steinaker claims she saw an iPad streaming video from bathroom at the front of the aircraft when she entered the cockpit.
She had been asked to go into the cockpit as the required second person when the pilot left to use the bathroom on a flight to Phoenix from Pittsburgh in 2017.
She said she saw the pilot in the streaming video on the iPad. She added the co-pilot had a ‘panicked look on his face’ and claimed it was a ‘new security and top-secret security measure installed in all of Southwest’s Boeing 737-800 planes’.
The lawsuit explains she took a photo on her mobile phone of the iPad video and reported the incident to Southwest management.
It claims she was warned that, if the incident ‘went public’, no-one would fly with Southwest again.
The pilots have denied the allegations and Southwest has said it will contest the lawsuit, saying it investigated the incident thoroughly at the time the complaint was made. It denied hidden cameras were ever placed on its aircraft.
Southwest said at the weekend: "When the incident happened two years ago, we investigated the allegations and addressed the situation with the crew involved.
"We can confirm from our investigation that there was never a camera in the lavatory; the incident was an inappropriate attempt at humor which the company did not condone."
Lisa
Lisa joined Travel Weekly nearly 25 years ago as technology reporter and then sailed around the world for a couple of years as cruise correspondent, before becoming deputy editor. Now freelance, Lisa writes for various print and web publications, edits Corporate Traveller’s client magazine, Gateway, and works on the acclaimed Remembering Wildlife series of photography books, which raise awareness of nature’s most at-risk species and helps to fund their protection.
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