A pilot admonished passengers for sending nude photos to one another via Apple’s AirDrop technology aboard a recent Southwest Airlines flight to Cabo and threatened to turn the plane around unless it stopped.
In a viral TikTok post by Teighlor Marsalis, the pilot is heard warning passengers over the plane’s public address system that he was prepared to return to the gate and have everyone deplaned unless people stopped sending nudes.
“So here’s the deal,” the pilot tells passengers. “If this continues when we’re on the ground, I’m gonna have to pull back to the gate, everybody’s gonna have to get off, we’re gonna have to get security involved, and vacation is gonna be ruined.”
“So you folks, whatever that AirDrop thing is, quit sending naked pictures and let’s get you to Cabo,” the pilot continued.
Taylor noted in her TikTok video of the incident that Southwest “takes airdropping nudes very seriously”.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time that something like this has happened on a Southwest Airlines plane. In June, a man was arrested for sending a photo of his genitals to other passengers aboard a Southwest flight – an act that is known as cyberflashing.
In fact, it’s not just Southwest that is having to deal with an increasing number of cyberflashing incidents.
Back in 2018, British Airways was criticized for the way it dealt with a complaint of cyberflashing from Ysolda Teague who received five unwanted ‘dick pics’ via AirDrop while say on a flight with her six-year-old daughter.
Ysolda says she told the flight attendants what had happened, but the crew were “completely flummoxed” and admitted to not knowing how to deal with the situation.
Earlier this year, the British government moved to make cyberflashing a crime with the threat of jail time for perpetrators found guilty of sending unsolicited photos of a person’s genitals, either for their own sexual gratification or to cause distress or humiliation to the victim.
Professor Jessica Ringrose carried out research in 2020 which found that 76 percent of girls aged between 12 and 18 had been sent unsolicited nude images of boys or men.
