Pilots accused of having live stream bathroom camera
A Southwest Airlines flight attendant has sued the airline after she reported spotting two pilots livestreaming hidden-camera footage from the plane’s bathroom into the cockpit.
Renee Steinaker alleged in her lawsuit that she discovered the surveillance when she was working on a flight in 2017, The Arizona Republic reported.
At one point during the flight, Captain Terry Graham asked Steinaker to come to the cockpit so that he could leave to use the lavatory, following the airline’s requirement that two crew members must be in the cockpit at all times.
Steinaker said when she entered, she noticed an iPad mounted to the windshield showing a livestream of Graham in the bathroom.
According to the suit, co-pilot Ryan Russell seemed panicked and told her the camera was part of a “new security and top secret security measure that had been installed in the lavatories of all Southwest Airlines' 737-800 planes”.
“They led her to believe that she and others had been filmed – had been videotaped if you will – while they were using the lavatory,” said aviation attorney Ronald Goldman. “It’s really hard to imagine a more outrageous kind of conduct.”
Steinaker took a picture of the iPad as an evidence. She said she was told not to speak about the incident and warned that “if this got out, if this went public, no one, I mean no one, would ever fly our airline again”.
The suit also alleged that the airline’s management attempted to silence and intimidate Steinaker and other flight attendants after they reported the incident.
Steinaker’s husband David, who also works as a flight attendant, was “subjected to at least five performance audits in the course of a few months following the incident, when in his prior twenty-four –[years] of service, he only had approximately three audits”, the suit stated.
The pair is suing the airline and the pilots for invasion of privacy, causing Renee Steinaker emotional distress, sexual harassment and retaliation.
Southwest Airlines has denied that any camera was placed in the lavatories.
“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,” an airline representative said in a statement to The Arizona Republic.
“Southwest will vigorously defend the lawsuit. 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 humour which the company did not condone.”