A union representing approximately 9,700 Southwest Airlines pilots is speaking out amid reports of a lawsuit accusing two pilots of live-streaming footage from the airplane’s bathroom into the cockpit.
Renee Steinaker, the flight attendant who filed the lawsuit, claims she entered the cockpit of a Pittsburgh-to-Phoenix flight in Feb. 2017 just as Capt. Terry Graham was leaving to use the lavatory. Upon entering, however, Steinaker alleges that she saw an iPad mounted to the windshield showing live-streamed footage from the plane’s bathroom, per the Arizona Republic.
Steinaker further claims that after she spotted it, the co-pilot explained it as a new type of security feature.
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Southwest Airlines said earlier this week that the incident was the result of an “inappropriate attempt at humor” and that there was never a camera in the bathroom. The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA) has since issued a press release essentially agreeing with the statement, and expanding on the alleged “attempt at humor.”
“The claims made in recent media reports referencing litigation filed by a Southwest Airlines flight attendant regarding the alleged use of cameras to conduct video surveillance in Southwest Airlines lavatories are completely false,” SWAPA wrote in a press release issued this week. “Southwest Airlines has never placed cameras and never videoed anyone in any lavatory, and the Pilots on Flight 1088 did not video anyone.”
SWAPA further alleged that the incident was a “poor attempt at humor where the pilot took a selfie video from the chest up, fully clothed, in the lavatory of a completely different airplane months before Flight 1088 and then replayed the exact same selfie video on his iPad when Ms. Steinaker came into the cockpit.”
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Both Southwest and SWAPA say the situation was addressed with the crew following the flight. SWAPA even alleges that Southwest found “no corroboration of the flight attendant’s allegations.”
The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association said the incident was a “poor attempt at humor where the pilot took a selfie video from the chest up, fully clothed, in the lavatory of a completely different airplane months before Flight 1088 and then replayed the exact same selfie video on his iPad when Ms. Steinaker came into the cockpit.”
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Steinaker, meanwhile, says that after she reported the alleged incident — as well as her claim that Capt. Graham left a loaded gun in the cockpit after disembarking — she was told not to tell anyone.
Steinaker added that she and her husband, also a Southwest flight attendant, have also been subjected to “threatening” observation by their managers.
Ronald L.M. Goldman, the attorney for the Steinakers, added that he felt SWAPA’s statement confirmed elements of Steinaker’s story.
“The purpose of that display cannot reasonably be construed as intending anything other than to horrify Ms. Steinaker by leading her to a reasonable belief the video was live and that her privacy, and that of others on the flight, had been invaded,” Goldman shared in a statement to the Arizona Republic.
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He added that a cockpit voice recorder, if one will be made available by Southwest, will prove that the pilots never revealed that they were joking.
