‘They think that they’re so sneaky’: Flight attendant explains why she has to ignore passengers who secretly snap photos of her

An Arizona flight attendant recently opened up about a problem she keeps facing at work. Passengers have been secretly taking photos of her while she’s doing her job, and it’s making her feel really uncomfortable.

Flight attendant Danika, who posts about her work experiences on TikTok, was serving drinks in first class when she spotted a male passenger holding up his phone in a weird way. She was getting ready for the safety demonstration and something about how he was holding his phone made her suspicious.

She found out she was right during the safety demo. Flight attendants do the demonstration in first class first, then walk through the rest of the plane. When Danika was walking back, she looked over and saw a picture of herself on the passenger’s phone screen, as per Bro Bible. “They think that they’re so sneaky. But being in a generation that was raised around phones, we know when the camera’s pointed at us,” she said in a video that got over 4,500 views.

Things got even weirder when she saw what happened next

When Danika looked at his screen again, she saw he had sent her photo to a friend. She could even read the messages they were sending back and forth about the picture. The whole thing made her feel really violated at work and now it’s harder for her to do her job well. 

This isn’t something that just happened once. Danika said passengers have taken photos of her several times during her career, and it usually happens when she’s working in first class. Because of these experiences, she doesn’t feel as comfortable being friendly and chatty with passengers anymore, even though that’s something she really enjoys doing. Flight attendants often deal with various challenging passenger behaviors that make their jobs harder.

Dealing with this kind of behavior on a plane is extra tricky. If someone acts inappropriately at a restaurant or bar, staff can kick them out. But on a plane, Danika is stuck with these passengers for hours. She worries that if she asks them to delete the photos, the rest of the flight will be super awkward since she still has to serve them drinks and be near them.

Other crew members have offered to step in and help her confront passengers when this happens. But Danika still doesn’t know what the best way to handle it is. She just knows she should be able to feel safe and comfortable while doing her job. Crew members have also spoken out about other uncomfortable workplace situations, showing that they face many different challenges while working.

What Danika is going through isn’t rare in the airline industry. A survey from the Association of Flight Attendants found that 70% of flight attendants say they’ve dealt with sexual harassment at work. Nearly one in five said they’ve been sexually assaulted. The FBI also said that sexual assaults on flights went up from 38 cases in 2014 to 63 in 2017. The real numbers are probably even higher since many people don’t report these things.