Pilot’s claim about hidden bathroom camera was ‘attempt at humor’: Southwest
Southwest Airlines has denied a flight attendant’s allegation that two pilots hid a camera inside an airplane bathroom and streamed video into the cockpit – calling the matter an “inappropriate attempt at humor,” according to a report.
Renee Steinaker said in court papers that she discovered the camera when she went into the cockpit while Capt. Terry Graham was using the lavatory during a flight from Pittsburgh to Phoenix in February 2017.
“When I walked into the cockpit, I noticed that his iPad was located on the window and on it appeared a picture of the pilot. And I looked further and I realized that it was our pilot, the captain in the lavatory, and then I looked even further,” the 20-year attendant told ABC News on Monday.
“I stared at it and realized that the picture was moving. So, it appeared to be a livestreaming video of the captain in the lavatory,” she said, adding that she asked the co-pilot about the shocking footage.
First Officer Ryan Russell said it was a new security streaming system and that the camera “was hidden so that no one would ever find it,” Steinaker said in court papers.
She told ABC that the information came to her as a “complete shock.”
Steinaker’s lawyer Ronald Goldman said in a previous ABC News interview: “It occurred to her that she, having used the lavatory, as had many of the other attendants and passengers, had likely been filmed.”
According to her lawsuit, Southwest officials told her to keep what she’d seen to herself after she reported the incident.
“Renee Steinaker was directed by a supervisor that she was not to talk to anybody about what happened. She was warned that ‘if this got out, if this went public, no one, I mean no one, would ever fly our airline again,'” her lawsuit says.
The airline told ABC the company had investigated the incident and denied her claim that a camera was in the lavatory. Both pilots have denied the allegations.
“The false video reference made to the in-flight crew was an inappropriate attempt at humor. When the incident happened two years ago, we swiftly investigated the claim, confirmed that no cameras were placed in any of the lavatories onboard and addressed the reported event with the crew involved,” the airline told the network in a statement.
“Southwest Airlines does not and has never used video surveillance in our lavatories and the Company does not condone the comment made no matter the intent. Again, the event was investigated thoroughly and no corroboration of the allegation was found. We will vigorously defend the lawsuit,” it added.
Steinaker said she didn’t find any humor in the incident.
“That’s not a joke. … If you think that you’re being violated — and someone’s watching you in a lavatory — no, that’s not a joke,” she told ABC.
Goldman said that it was “clear from its statement that Southwest palmed this egregious event off as a joke, and it still fails to recognize the gravity of the harassment and threat to the safety of the flight.
“A purpose of this suit is to make sure that the culture that treats sexual harassment and hostile working environments at 30,000 feet as a joke will, it is hoped, end with the successful conclusion of this lawsuit,” Goldman added.