An Indonesian woman has been arrested for impersonating a flight attendant after she created a fake uniform and ID badge for an airline that had refused to hire her as a crew member.
The 23-year-old woman, later identified as Khairun Nisya, had applied to become a flight attendant at the Indonesian carrier Batik Air, but was knocked back at the interview stage.
Afraid to tell her family that she had been rejected, however, Nisya allegedly came up with an elaborate plan to deceive everyone into thinking she had, in fact, been hired.
Nisya bought a counterfeit version of Batik Air’s distinctive uniform, which comprises a white kebaya blouse and a patterned skirt, online, and even managed to get hold of a fake airline ID badge.
She then went to the airport and bought a normal passenger ticket to travel on a Batik Air flight from Palembang’s Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II Airport to Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
During the flight, however, the real flight attendants became suspicious of Nisya after noticing subtle differences in her kebaya blouse. They struck up a conversation with her and tested her knowledge of basic crew procedures, which she didn’t know the answers to.
Concerned about Nisya’s intentions, the crew radioed ahead for aviation security officers to meet the plane on arrival, and she was taken into custody for questioning.
Nisya initially denied any wrongdoing but later admitted to impersonating a flight attendant.
Embarassingly for Nisya, her detention was filmed by aviation security officers, and a video of her admitting her deception was later made public.
While some commentators on the now viral video have raised concern about a possible threat to flight security, officials have pointed out that Nisya bought a regular passenger ticket and passed through standard security screening at the airport.
Other commentators have also defended Nisya, likening her behavior to nothing more than cosplay.
What do you think? Should this ‘fake’ flight attendant feel the full weight of the law for her conduct, or was she just playing dress up?
