It’s no secret that we’re coming off a two-year period of extremely crazy in-flight behaviour, with data in both the US and the UK showing that passenger nuisance incidents increased as people started flying again after the Covid-19 lockdowns. Although the numbers have calmed somewhat since 2021, shocking incidents continue on an almost weekly basis. “Rebellious passengers,” of course, covers a whole way of sins. There was the woman who stripped down to her underwear and tried twice to enter the cockpit on a flight from Manchester to Cyprus. The drunken man who pretended to fire an imaginary gun at other passengers tried to open both the plane’s cabin and cockpit doors and pushed a flight attendant against a wall on a three-and-a-half-hour domestic US flight. The man who jumped an airline drinks trolley during the flight, before taking off his clothes on the runway, causing the plane to divert. It’s no secret that we’re coming off a two-year period of extremely crazy in-flight behavior It’s not just chaos for miles: in the past year alone we’ve had three cases of people opening an emergency exit and walking on the wing of the plane while the aircraft was parked or traveling through the airport. Now it looks like we have a new offense to add to the drinking, stripping, and impromptu wing-walking: AirDropped nudes. On Tuesday, a Southwest Airlines pilot told passengers he would be forced to turn the plane around if someone on the plane didn’t stop sending them nude photos via AirDrop technology. Captured in a viral video, the captain told passengers he would “have to pull back to the gate” if the mystery culprit didn’t stop sending the unwanted nudies. “Whatever this AirDrop thing is, stop sending nude pics and let’s go to Cabo,” he told the passengers. For those new to it, Apple’s AirDrop feature allows anyone with one of the brand’s smartphones or tablets to send an image or other file to someone nearby ‒ about 30 feet, or nine meters ‒ without having to to have his number. Bluetooth technology means that unwanted photos sent by a stranger can show up on your phone at close range. for example, an airplane cabin. AirDrop gives recipients the option to either open or ignore the image, but many who aren’t familiar with it accidentally click on anything sent to them, sometimes with dire results. Using it to send inappropriate photos has been called “cyberflashing”. Not shocked that we have one chaotic incident a year on a flight, many of us now board a flight expecting some kind of commotion in the sky Tuesday’s case wasn’t the first time AirDrop has disrupted a flight: In June, a man was kicked off a Southwest flight after an explicit AirDropping photo ‒ allegedly of him performing oral sex ‒ with other passengers. Meanwhile, an Israeli flight was canceled in May after more than 150 passengers received an eerie photo of a crashed plane shortly after boarding, AirDropped anonymously to multiple phones. Sending an unsolicited nude photo is widely recognized as sexual harassment and could soon be criminalized in the UK as part of a proposed internet safety bill. But, in a more practical sense, pilots already have a million little things to deal with to get their charges from airport to airport. Adding Bluetooth pranksters to the growing list of passenger nightmares — especially when the image in question, as with the plane crash photo, could raise serious security concerns — is the absolute last thing they need. It feels like the last depth in a pit of unnecessary in-flight behavior. Far from being shocked when we have one chaotic incident a year on a flight, many of us now get on the plane fully expecting some kind of mayhem in the sky. Before I caught a delayed easyJet flight back to Mykonos in May, three lads pulled down their jackets and blasted music through a speaker at the airport, badgering staff and other passengers to ‘have fun with them’. Two of them were eventually denied boarding, but not before a long back and forth with the staff delayed us another hour and a half. Where we once might have looked around, alert and concerned, I spy fellow frequent flyers doing the same as me: putting on our headphones, hunkering down in our seats, and patiently waiting for the madness to end. It got to the point where you couldn’t pay me enough to be a flight attendant There are obviously mental health issues involved in some of these incidents, with little way for airlines to identify any vulnerable passengers before they board their flight. But a lot of it seems to be old-fashioned bad behaviour, fueled by nerves, drink or frustrations with flight delays. It’s gotten to the point where you can’t pay me enough to be a flight attendant – they often feel less like security guards and wait staff and more like zookeepers. Regarding the new trend of in-flight cyberflashing and terrorizing fellow passengers with threatening photos, I’m not sure what the answer is. Is there a way the cabin crew can ensure all devices are turned off or in flight mode immediately after boarding? If there was, I’m sure it would be in place by now. (On an individual level, it is possible to set your Apple device’s AirDrop settings to “Contacts Only” or “Download Disabled” to prevent unwanted files from appearing.) Do we all have to take regular online passenger behavior classes before we’re allowed to fly, or be breathalyzed and asked to walk in a straight line before boarding? Whatever the inconvenience to non-obtrusive passengers, I’d do it without complaint. Just get me on a flight where everyone can keep it together from boarding to arrivals.
