A former Southwest Airlines pilot has been charged with indecent exposure after allegedly exposing his genitals during a flight from Philadelphia to Orlando, Florida on August 10, 2020 according to federal authorities who filed the case in the U.S. District Court for Maryland on Friday.
Michael Haak was the pilot in command of Southwest Airlines flight WN6607 during which he is accused of intentionny committing “an act of lewd, indecent and obscene exposure of his genitals in a public place.”
The one page document did not detail who had witnessed the act or how long Haak exposed his genitals for. Federal authorities simply said that the events “began, continued and were completed while the aircraft was in flight”.
A spokesperson for Southwest Airlines said that no passengers witnessed the incident and that Haak left the airline before the allegations came to light.
“The pilot in question is no longer employed by Southwest Airlines and departed the company last year prior to us becoming aware of the matter,” a spokesperson for the airline confirmed.
“The event was recently brought to our attention, and we’ve cooperated with the appropriate outside agencies as they investigate,” a statement continued.
A spokesperson said that Southwest takes “all matters related to workplace conduct very seriously” and that it has a “well defined policy and reporting process for harassment, sexual harassment and discrimination”.
In 2019, a Southwest Airlines flight attendant filed a lawsuit against two of the airline’s pilots claiming they set up a hidden camera in an airplane lavatory and live-streamed the images to an iPad set up in the flight deck.
The Southwest Airlines Pilots Associations said the whole incident was simply “a poor attempt at humor where the pilot took a selfie video from the chest up, fully clothed, in the lavatory of a completely different airplane months before Flight 1088.”
He then “replayed the exact same selfie video on his iPad” when the flight attendant entered the flight deck, the union said of the incident.
