Back in the spring, a Delta Diamond Medallion frequent flyer took to social media to share her efforts reporting flight attendants who were seen using their personal phones midflight. She said that she had been receiving SkyMiles as a reward.

‘Wrote my complaint about Joshua, the FA who hid in the galley and was overall s***** SDF-ATL [Louisville-Atlanta] Wed. Got a personal call from a Delta customer service agent and 8,500 Skypesos! Winning!

She would take photos of the flight attendants. Sharing one, she offered “This will be the third photo I’ve sent Delta in two weeks. Three out of four flights, FAs on their devices. This one is clever – hiding it behind the Delta device while headed toward take-off.”

While flight attendants should be paying attention to their duties not their personal devices the backlash against her online was swift – in some cases for getting the crewmembers in trouble, but I think mostly because she appeared to be doing it for personal gain (if SkyMiles can be called a gain).

Passenger on active witch hunt trying to get flight attendants fired
byu/wingsfever indelta

The internet doxxed her over it, and she deleted her social media accounts.

Angela B. Peery, the Delta passenger who gloated about repeatedly complaining about flight attendants who she sees using their phone to get miles out of it, thinks it's criminal or defamatory to talk about what an obnoxious Karen she is.

It is not. https://t.co/Ky0HAjswma pic.twitter.com/Va3laNKEUs

— Ari Cohn (@AriCohn) April 13, 2024

Now word from a flight attendant group is that she didn’t actually get anywhere with her complaints.

• Her reports that ‘Delta Security’ was investigating staff and planned to terminate crew appears not to have gone anywhere.

• No action was taken against anyone ridiculing her online, either (though she claimed there was).

• And the SkyMiles she reported receiving weren’t for reporting bad actors among crew, but apologies for the airline’s service failures like delays.

  Here’s the insider scoop: Peery’s now-infamous post about “winning” 8,500 SkyMiles for reporting a Delta flight attendant, according to our Delta source, was a fabrication. She didn’t receive those so-called “Skypesos” for snitching on flight attendants. Instead, the points awarded came from flight delays and other run-of-the-mill inconveniences.

• They claim that Delta investigated her for complaining too much. Remember that it was Northwest (since acquired by Delta) that went all the way to the Supreme Court defending its right to terminate frequent flyer accounts of customers who complained too much and received compensation. (Norhtwest won.) She’s now “officially banned from racking up SkyMiles for petty grievances.”

This woman became known as “Delta Karen” among cabin crew but the matter appears to have been blown out of proportion. However, flight attendants on phones is considered a big deal at some airlines. Earlier this year, United Airlines gave cabin crew an ultimatum: quit playing with your phones or you’re fired.

Not always so at American. When a flight attendant complained to then-American Airlines CEO Doug Parker about colleagues who “don’t get [their] face out of your phone” he told the crewmember to “be a little empathetic.”

Can’t get no service in first class. She to busy on her phone whole flight! @AmericanAir pic.twitter.com/gqQtHyYUzX

— Todd Sutton (@tdoggsutton) February 6, 2024

American wants flight attendants on their company-provided devices, and those devices are almost considered more valuable than they are. Without their own phones, though, how else to play Candy Crush?