A Southwest Airlines flight attendant said she witnessed two pilots streaming live voyeur-camera footage from the airplane’s bathroom into the cockpit, according to a lawsuit filed Friday.
The attendant, Renee Steinaker, alleged she discovered the sneaky surveillance during a 2017 flight from Pittsburgh to Phoenix, according to Arizona Central.
The suit, which was filed in federal court for the District of Arizona, said at a point during the flight, the pilot, Capt. Terry Graham, asked Steinaker to come to the cockpit so he could go to the restroom.
Nothing weird about that; it is Southwest Airlines policy to have at least two crew members in the cockpit at all times, according to the suit.
However, it did get weird when Steinaker entered the cockpit. She said there was an iPad mounted to the windshield showing a livestream video of Graham in the lavatory.
Co-pilot Ryan Russell, panicked when he recognized that she noticed the device, and tried to downplay Steinaker’s discovery by telling her that it was part of a new “top secret” security measure on Southwest flights, according to the newspaper.
The flight attendant didn’t buy it.
She took a photo of the iPad and alerted Southwest officials upon landing.
Steinaker claims she was told not to talk to anybody about the incident and was warned that “if this got out, if this went public, no one, I mean no one, would ever fly our airline again,” the report said.
Her attorney says she has faced retaliation since reporting the incident.
“In my view, Southwest Airlines has treated this as ‘how dare they report it’ rather than ‘thank you for letting us know,’” the attorney told the newspaper.
The airline provided a statement to Arizona Central.
“The safety and security of our employees and customers is Southwest’s uncompromising priority. As such, Southwest does not place cameras in the lavatories of our aircraft. At this time, we have no other comment on the pending litigation,” the airline said.
