Southwest Passenger 'Bombarded By Inappropriate Photos' From Stranger

Source: Ralph Freso / Getty

Southwest Passenger Received Nudes From Stranger On Flight

Kat Pitman was settling into her aisle seat on a Southwest Airlines flight from Louisville to Chicago on Friday morning, texting her husband, when she recieved a notification on her iPhone. When she looked down, she saw an AirDrop request from someone whose name she didn’t recognize who was sending her a pornographic image.

“It was just very explicit. It just shocked me,” the 40-year-old said in an interview with USA TODAY.

Pitman immediately turned off the AirDrop feature, an Apple tool that allows people to wirelessly send photos, videos and documents to nearby phones and computers using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, but she quickly turned it back on to take a screenshot of the sender’s name. When she did that, she instantly received two more AirDrop requests, one was a video while the other was another graphic photo.

The flight was still boarding when this whole situation went down, so Pitman decided to show her phone to two Southwest flight attendants at the front of the plane. It was only an hour-long flight, but she worried the sender might be in her row, which rightfully made her uncomfortable.

She showed the flight attendants the sender’s inappropriate screen name and was amazed when one of the flight attendants picked up the intercom and told the man to immediately stop AirDropping.

“There was no question. They weren’t like, ‘What’s AirDrop?’ They just took care of it,” she said. “They continued to check on me during the flight and as I left the flight. I just was incredibly impressed.”

A spokesman for Southwest, Chriz Mainz, confirmed a passenger sent lewd photos and videos via AirDrop on Southwest Flight 1388.

“The safety and comfort of all of our customers is our highest concern, and we don’t condone such inappropriate behavior,” he said in a statement to USA TODAY. “Our crews are equipped to respond quickly and appropriately to address these concerns expressed by our customers, which is exactly what they did in this case.”

Pitman travels weekly for her work as a nonprofit executive and said this is the first time this incident has happened to her on a plane. She did say that she has received one other random AirDrop from a stranger, but it was just a photo of a playground sent by another patron at a family restaurant.