Imagine sitting in your seat on a plane and suddenly receiving an unsolicited picture of the pilot…with his shirt off. That happened on a Frontier Airlines flight, though it wasn’t the pilot who sent the selfie…or even a picture of the pilot.
Prankster Sends Shirtless “Selfie” Of Pilot To Other Passengers Via AirDrop On Frontier Airlines Flight
We’ve highlighted the potential for Apple AirDrop to be used to for nefarious purposes on airplanes and now we have another data point.
A popular “video creator” on Instagram named Jay Nagy decided to engage in some mischief onboard his Frontier Airlines flight.
He found a picture of a pilot with his shirt off, added a caption (“Just a quick selfie b4 I fly dis plane”), and AirDropped it to dozens of passengers seated around him.
The pilot was not amused, making a PA announcement:
“Anyone sending pictures needs to stop. That is not what I look like. That’s not me.”
View this post on Instagram
I don’t know what the actual pilot looked like, but it’s not a bad look…and the voice sort of fit. Maybe he should have just kept quiet?
While this was a fairly harmless prank, the experiment again shows the potential harm that a mass AirDrop of an image or document could have on a plane. Imagine if instead of the shirtless joke, he sent out a suicide note from “the pilot” or bomb threat. Even if the threat itself is not real, the panic it could cause onboard might indeed create a real threat.
CONCLUSION
A prankster used Apple’s AirDrop technology to drop a shirtless selfie of the “pilot” while onboard a Frontier Airlines flight. The pilot, if the recording is also not a spoof, was not amused.
If you have an iPhone, I’d set your AirDrop preferences to only be visible to contacts. I don’t want strangers AirDropping me anything…especially on a plane.
It really could be a way of inducing panic aboard an aircraft. I never thought about this happening, in fact, I didn’t know what the airdrop feature was for until reading it on this blog.
I remember a similar “prank” sometime ago where someone airdropped a photo of a pilot standing on top of the plane on a LH flight. The person got arrested if I remember correctly.
There’s a time and place for pranks, but not on an airplane
Suppose that’s better then sending a message any other Al-Qaeda on here?
That’s not the pilot talking…
I figured. Probably just as much a hoax as the cooking steak in lavatory one.
Nice iPhone 7, dude.
I leave my bluetooth off unless I’m using it.
Looks like an old photo of Nick Lachey. I would’ve been busting up laughing if I was on that plane. (But someone would have had to show me the pic as I don’t own an iPhone.)
Anyone that has public airdrop on is an idiot. Just turn it off.