A former Air Canada flight attendant, who flew between 2017 and 2019, falsely claimed to be an airline pilot and used a forged airline employee ID card to obtain hundreds of free flights on American Airlines, United Airlines, and Hawaiian Airlines over four years.
According to prosecutors, he also requested cockpit jumpseat access despite not being an actual pilot.
The indictment does not publicly name the airlines, instead describing them based on headquarter cities of Honolulu, Chicago, and Fort Worth. That’s not a very sneaky code!
Criminal charges in Hawaii are tied to two Hawaiian Airlines flights in 2024.
He was indicted on October 2 by a federal grand jury in Hawaii, arrested in Panama, and extradited to the U.S. He pled not guilty in federal court in Honolulu on Tuesday. As a foreign citizen with no U.S. ties, extradicted to the U.S., he was considered a flight risk and held in custody. He faces two counts of wire fraud (facing up to 20 years for each).
Last year I wrote about a Florida man who hacked Spirit Airlines to score 120 free flights, posing as a pilot and as a flight attendant to nonrev on seven different airlines over the course of six years, in a real life ‘Catch Me If You Can‘.
Another man used fake airline credentials to book 1,953 free flights on Spirit Airlines over a 21 month period. He was a Mesa Airlines employee for four months in 2015, was fired, but learned the system quickly.
(HT: Paddle Your Own Kanoo)
That’s a crime?!&@