“Always Fun in the Front:” Pilots’ Exchange Pics and Chat Online With Pax During Flight

A WOW air crew raised eyebrows after a flirtation via mobile devices between the flight deck and two passengers in the cabin went viral.

When there is absolutely nothing else at all to do, an iPhone can help fend off boredom in a thousand little ways. Two passengers on a WOW air flight from San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to Reykjavík-Keflavík Airport (KEF) were surprised to find that the pilots were also passing the long flight time using a mobile device.

According to the Daily Mail, the two passengers on the flight were using their phones’ Airdrop capabilities, which allows users to send messages, files or photographs to nearby phones through a Bluetooth connection, to exchange selfies with anyone else on the plane who also might be using the function on their mobile devices. It turns out that someone in the cockpit soon responded with a photograph from the cockpit.

Penelope Louise and Nicole Villagran say that they never expected the flight deck to respond to their somewhat silly selfie, but the pilots sent a group photograph of their own with a caption reading “Always fun in the front.” Louise and Villagran, who also first connected in-flight using the Airdrop feature on their phones then began trading messages and images back and forth with the flight officers in control of the plane.

“So WOW air doesn’t offer wi-fi (even on their transatlantic flights) so on my flight yesterday I ended up chatting with another girl in the row behind me on the plane,” Louise who runs the popular The Flyaway Girl travel blog explained in a Facebook post. “She then wanted me to share a photo we took, so I went to AirDrop it. We then saw that a few other people had their AirDrop on… so what are two bored girls to do? We shared our selfie to everyone with AirDrop [and] a few people accepted and then we got a reply… IT WAS THE PILOTS!”

According to the post, several other passengers joined in on the action and the fun continued for the bulk of the flight. “So the rest of the flight was us and the pilots and cabin crew airdropping photos back and forth,” Louise wrote. “BEST. FLIGHT. EVER.”

Louise said that she never felt at any point that the pilots were not concentrating properly on their jobs and noted that the communications stopped entirely about an hour before the plane landed at KEF. “I don’t think we ever really went ‘uhhh who’s flying the plane,’ but just found it so funny,” she told the newspaper. “So shocking.”

While not expressly prohibited, the airline made it clear that the mid-flight antics were not appreciated. WOW airline officials told reporters that they “do not recommend pilots use their mobile devices to interact with passengers during flights.”

[Photo: Shutterstock]