The message appeared to have come from withing the plane's cockpit. Photo / Twitter.com
The message appeared to have come from withing the plane's cockpit. Photo / Twitter.com
As airlines explore the potential of in-flight communication, Delta Airlines passenger JP Thorn received a very inappropriate message from the pilot.
When 27-year-old Minnesota student checked his phone on the other side of his flight, he saw he had received a surprising message via the gay dating app Grindr.
"I see you're on my flight," read the message "Enjoy the ride to Chicago."
"My reaction was I knew I needed to get off this plane as fast as I can," Mr Thorn told The New York Post.
From the app, which uses proximity to connect users, it appeared to have been sent from the plane's cockpit 27m in front of him.
Minnesota student, Thorn was unnerved by the midair encounter. Photo / Twitter.comn
The message, which was sent halfway through his 90-minute flight, came from a profile that featured a picture of the sky taken from the controls of an aircraft.
"I've had some weird experiences with proximity stuff on Grindr," said the Hamline University student, but this midflight chat-up line took the creepiness to new heights.
After Mr Thorn's "deductive reasoning" led him to challenge the identity of his Grindr correspondent, the profile confirmed that he was a pilot with the airline and the two shared a brief exchange of messages.
Though the location of the exchange seems to have been the only remarkable thing about the liaison, as Thorn described the ensuing conversation as "really standard".
Unnerved by the incident, Mr Thorn deleted his app at the other end of his connecting flight.
Before deleting the app, Mr Thorn uploaded screenshot of the message to Twitter which has since gained more than 218,000 likes.
He said that he's since had a lot of comments from Twitter followers that he should have given the mysterious pilot a chance.
Repenting his hasty rebuffal, he told The Post that had he not been catching a connecting flight that he "totally would have met him [the pilot] for coffee."
When he found out how much money pilots made a year, he added there was an extra incentive for giving the pilot a second chance.
The experience has not put him off from flying with the American airline saying it was "the only airline I tend to use".
Delta has yet to respond to a request for comment.
