Honolulu: A former flight attendant accused of posing as a pilot and working airline employee fooled three US carriers into giving her free flights for more than a year, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
Court documents contained no explanation of why, in an industry focused on flight and airport safety, the airlines didn’t recognize the credentials as invalid.
The indictment did not identify any of the airlines involved but said the US carriers were based in Honolulu, Chicago and Fort Worth, Texas. A spokesperson for Hawaiian Airlines said on Wednesday that the company did not comment on litigation. Representatives for United Airlines and American Airlines did not instantly respond to emails.
One Canadian carrier based in Toronto, Porter Airlines, said in an emailed statement it was “unable to verify any data related to this story”. Air Canada,which is based in Montreal but has a major hub in Toronto,said it had no record of Pokornik working there.
Allegations surprise industry experts
John Cox, a retired pilot who runs an aviation safety firm in St Petersburg, Florida, called the allegations surprising, considering the cross-checking that airlines coudl do to verify the employment of a crew member seeking to fly on another airline.
Airlines generally rely on databases of active airline employees maintained on third-party websites to check whether someone is actually an employee.
“The only thing I can think is that they did not show him as no longer employed by the airline,” Cox said in a phone interview.”Consequently, when the checks were made at the gate, he showed up as a valid employee.”