British Airways has a bizarre new policy for flight attendants and pilots, prohibiting them from posting any photo or video taken at a layover hotel. That applies inside the hotel, outside the hotel, and even in the parking lot.
They’ve even been told to comb through their existing social media feeds and delete every trace of past hotel content They have to do this “even if the account is set to private” – or risk firing.
According to the airline’s security team, image tools can read subtle background cues (parking lot signage, pool tiling, and even the geometry of windows) to figure out a hotel’s location, and this represents a safety risk. That means,
- No more “get ready with me” TikToks in front of the bathroom mirror.
- Uniform shots in the corridor or lobby.
- Pool-side and beach selfies.
- Group photos in the hotel bar, restaurant, or shuttle.
Even a quick room-view snap showing nothing but curtains and skyline is covered by the ban. This follows a February 2023 ban on posting while “professionally engaged” (anything to do with the airline, from cockpit selfies to sitting in an engine cowl – the sort of photos that are de rigueur working for an airline). That went farther than what you see from the world’s strictest airlines.
@codybx New uniform day ✈️ @British Airways #bacabincrew #cabincrew #fyp #britishairways ♬ original sound – zoeilanahill
And the idea that crew hotels are somehow secret is rather odd. Crews arrive in uniform to the same contracted hotels in each city. Local drivers, aviation enthusiasts and would-be stalkers already know where they’re staying. They go out into the city and tell people where they’re staying. So while it’s possible to extract location clues from photos, it’s entirely unnecessary to do so. What’s more, it’s not as though there’s actually been an incident of this! It’s all hypothetical.
Some of an airline’s best recruiting is done peer-to-peer via social media, and cracking down on crew behavior makes those same jobs less attractive to new crew. If anything, this would drive up labor costs or drive down crew quality, by shrinking the pool of available talent. And they’ll be turning headquarters staff into social media enforcers, which comes at a cost – not just in staff time, but also morale.
It seems like selfies, too, is the least bad thing British Airways crew are doing on their layovers? After all, an entire crew was nearly kicked out of a resort after a drunken fight, crew fabricated a mugging to cover up a wild night in Rio and a flight attendant was investigated for offering sex to passengers.
Unrelated, but still relevant: 36 years ago today, June 4, 1989, was the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. Never forget. @Un
A lot of old accounts have become inaccessible to the owners. This policy can be enforced going forward but restrictions on past posting when there wasn’t this policy is something that may end up in lawsuits.
If I ran an airline I would ban pilots and FA’s from having a youtube channel or other social media account about being a pilot or FA even if the company is not mentioned. That included analyzing air traffic control talk and accidents.
Did airlines ever really have a hard time getting FA’s or pilots to want to work for them? I doubt it.
I remember the days when BlackBerry made phone models with the cameras removed for use in sensitive environments. Something that might need to make a comeback.
@1990
Chinas Jan 6th.
Golfer’s post shows just how overwhelmingly stupid he is about airlines and their personnel.
As much as I enjoy watching these videos, I think that it was only a matter of time before a ban like this came into force. Its one thing to tell someone where you’re staying, it’s another thing to broadcast that to the entire globe via YouTube / social media. FA’s are so poorly paid that they have to turn to side hustles like this to make extra money. Airlines should look at that too.
Smells of a DOGE style job cutting method. Find any excuse to fire a lot of people. Discrimination against front line employees. As the article states, it’s a publicly known ” secret” where the crews stay.
@Walter Barry — Not at all. That’s an egregious false equivalence.
Peaceful student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, verses a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, which was a direct attack on American democracy.
The right to protest and voice opposition to government actions is a cornerstone of a free society. They clearly do not have that ‘right’ in the CCP-dominated mainland.
However, in the US this right is not a license for violence or an attack on the institutions and individuals upholding the Constitution, even when the outgoing President incites the riot.
I know, I know… depending on where you get your information, objective reality may be challenging. You can brush it all off by self-diagnosing your opponents with a made-up illness, like a ‘TDS,’ or something… that should help!
Employees of the financial services industry have to have their social media monitored. Nothing related to work can be posted unless it is cleared through compliance. I don’t think work related social media being monitored through the employer is unreasonable. That being said, a total blackout of work related social media is a little overboard.