Lawsuit Alleges Southwest Pilots Livestreamed Restroom Video On Pittsburgh Flight
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- A Southwest Airlines employee has filed a federal lawsuit over an incident that happened on flight that originated out of Pittsburgh.
The attorney is seeking damages claiming his client, a female flight attendant, was sexually harassed, humiliated, and embarrassed.
He says the alleged actions aboard the plane compromised safety and comfort.
"The cockpit of an airliner is not a place where shenanigans of this kind should take place," said Attorney Ronald Goldman in a Skype interview with KDKA's Bob Allen.
He represents a flight attendant who's lawsuit is being filed against Southwest Airlines and two pilots.
She is accusing them of invasion of privacy and creating a hostile workplace.
It happened on a flight from Pittsburgh to Phoenix and Goldman says she was called into the cockpit and saw an iPad live-streaming video from the airplane's bathroom.
"There is a picture of a captain in a lavatory being shown on an iPad in an airline cockpit," he said.
According to Goldman when the flight attendant questioned the co-pilot as to why the iPad was in cockpit he offered this explanation:
GOLDMAN: He allegedly said to her, "well, this is a new security system for Southwest Airlines, that's on the 'downlow' and you shouldn't tell anybody about it."
Goldman says that explanation caused her serious emotional stress.
"As it caused her to think that she had been videotaped while she was using the lavatory, that there were passengers, women, children, men, who could've been videotaped while they were using it," he said.
Goldman criticized the airline, claiming the voice recorder in the cockpit and the iPad were never seized and he claims the pilot and copilot are still working.
"If all of this proves out and the allegations are strong, these pilots were using the cockpit of an airline as a playpen for peeping toms," he said.
The lawsuit accuses Southwest of retailing and monitoring the employee in an attempt to silence and intimidate.
Southwest says they will defend the lawsuit.
"Southwest will vigorously defend the lawsuit," the company said in a statement. "When the incident happened two years ago, we investigated the allegations and addressed the situation with the crew involved. We can confirm from our investigation that there was never a camera in the lavatory; the incident was an inappropriate statement made at an attempt at humor which the company did not condone."
