Suit claims camera put in jet restroom

PHOENIX — A lawsuit filed against Southwest Airlines by a flight attendant alleges pilots on a 2017 flight had an iPad streaming video from a hidden camera in a lavatory in one of the airline’s jets.

Southwest responded Saturday by denying it places cameras in aircraft lavatories and by calling the 2017 incident an “inappropriate attempt at humor” not condoned by the company.

The lawsuit alleges flight attendant Renee Steinaker saw an iPad streaming video from the plane’s forward restroom when she entered the cockpit to be the required second person in the cockpit when the pilot left to use the facilities about 2½ hours into a Feb. 27, 2017, flight to Phoenix from Pittsburgh.

According to the suit, Steinaker saw the pilot in the streaming video on the iPad and the co-pilot “with a panicked look on his face” acknowledged that the iPad was streaming from a camera in the restroom but asserted it was a “new security and top-secret security measure installed in all of Southwest’s Boeing 737-800 planes.”

The suit said Steinaker took a cellphone photo of the iPad video, provided the photo with a report to Southwest management and was warned by a supervisor not to tell anybody about the incident.

Court filings by attorneys for Dallas-based Southwest and the two pilots denied the livestreaming allegations, and Southwest on Saturday issued statements saying it will vigorously contest the suit and denying it places cameras in aircraft lavatories.

The suit against Southwest and the two pilots was announced Saturday by attorneys for Steinaker and her husband, also a Southwest flight attendant.

No trial date has been set for the suit.