Air Canada Flight Crew Warned Against Explicit Material in Cockpits

Internal airline memos reveal that the carrier’s chief pilot, on at least two occasions, warned flight crews about the practice of leaving explicit images behind in aircraft cockpits.

The Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) has uncovered internal Air Canada communications that warn flight crews that they face termination and prosecution if caught hiding “suggestive images in company aircraft.” The most recent memo, dated September 3 of last year, is titled “Inappropriate Material in the Embraer Flight Deck.”

The letter, written by Air Canada’s chief pilot, Rod Graham, begins, “I am disappointed to have to raise this issue once again but unfortunately we have some people that have yet to understand the message.” Graham ended the warning by saying, “Leaving inappropriate material in the flight deck must cease immediately.”

The memo indicates that the materials were intentionally hidden on the flight deck rather than inadvertently left behind. In one particular case, the materials were found at an extremely inopportune time: “On a recent flight with Transport Canada in the jump seat inappropriate material was once again discovered.” Transport Canada is a transportation regulatory agency within the Canadian Government.

The bulletin follows a similar warning dated three months earlier.

Air Canada spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick told CBC News, “The material in question consisted almost entirely of inappropriate business cards and was confined mainly to one aircraft type and route, our Embraer E-90s operating to Las Vegas.”

The exact nature of the explicit images is not clear.

Despite the increasingly severe tone of the warnings from the airline’s chief pilot, the message does not appear to have halted the problem. Air Canada confirmed to CBC News that explicit images were again found on flight decks earlier this year.

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