A Southwest Airlines flight attendant has sued the carrier, saying it retaliated after she reported seeing two pilots livestreaming video from the bathroom on an iPad in the cockpit during one of her flights.
In the suit, Renee Steinaker said she was working a Feb. 27, 2017, flight between Pittsburgh and Phoenix when the incident in question occurred. Two-and-a-half hours into the flight, she alleged, Capt. Terry Graham, the pilot, asked her to enter the cockpit so that he could leave and go to the restroom.
The request follows airline policy requiring two members in the cockpit at all times.
When Steinaker entered the cockpit, she saw an iPad to the left of the captain’s seat where she allegedly saw a livestream of Graham in the bathroom.
The co-pilot Ryan Russell looked panicked, according to the filing, and told Steinaker the cameras were a new top-secret security measure installed in all Southwest Airlines planes. Steinaker did not believe the explanation and took a photo of the iPad with her cellphone.
“They led her to believe that she and others had been filmed — had been videotaped if you will — while they were using the lavatory. It’s really hard to imagine a more outrageous kind of conduct,” her attorney Ronald Goldman told the Arizona Republic.
Steinaker and other crew members later reported the incident to the airline and claims she was told to not tell anyone about the incident because “if this got out, if this went public, no one, I mean no one, would ever fly our airline again.”
Steinaker and her husband, David, who is also a Southwest Airlines flight attendant, allege their employer has retaliated by increasing their numbers of performance audits and they’ve been monitored by managers in a “threatening and bizarre manner.”
Goldman said, “In my view, Southwest Airlines has treated this as ‘how dare they report it’ rather than ‘thank you for letting us know.'”
Attorneys for the pilots have denied the two were livestreaming from inside the bathroom.
“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,” a Southwest Airlines representative said.
