A Southwest Airlines pilot reveals what he really thinks about his flight attendants. Unfortunately, he only realizes his mic is broadcasting to the plane when it’s too late.
TikTok creator Matt Zieba (@matthewzieba) dug up some years-old air traffic control audio that resurfaced and used to attract millions of views in recent days. In both cases, cockpit audio from two different Southwest Airlines flights captured pilots making offensive remarks they didn’t know were going out over open airwaves.
In a clip that’s been viewed more than 2.4 million times, a pilot is heard talking to his co-pilot and making disparaging remarks about flight attendants. Specifically, he found the majority of recent crew members to be unworthy of his romantic interests because they were overweight, old, or gay.
Southwest Airlines pilot caught on hot mic
“Stream of gays and grannies and grandes,” he said, with some honestly impressive alliterative flourish.
“I still wouldn’t want anyone to know if I had banged them. So, I mean, it was a complete disaster.”
That audio originally became public in 2019, but Zieba’s audience on TikTok can’t get enough.
A similar clip viewed more than 2.3 million times features another Southwest pilot flying out of San Jose let loose with a string of profanities about the area’s liberal leanings.
That audio was circa 2021, at which time the airline said it was “fully addressing the situation internally.”
Can we listen?
These pilot “hot mic” cases are usually caused by someone accidentally pressing the push-to-talk (PTT) button on their radio headsets.
One slip up and anyone on regional air traffic control radio can get a candid listen at what happens in the cockpit.
If someone wants to get a listen to routine radio chatter, there are apps and other methods available.
In a less salacious example of bad radio behavior, the folks at Get Checked break down some testy exchanges between an air traffic controller in Phoenix and an American Airlines pilot. Essentially, the pilot repeatedly neglected to identify himself by his flight number when talking through arrival details. The person in the control tower told him to correct the issue to no avail.
But the saltiest language we got out of that exchange was the pilot’s frustrated “I am not gonna waste my time.” That’s pretty PG-rted compared to the hard R rating of the Southwest folks.
More terrible travel tales, please
We here at the Dot are obviously big fans of any kind of airline horror stories. Stories include passengers stranded in the Bahamas, baggage prices reaching unreasonable levels, or airline fashion police going out of bounds.
Commenters on the clip were enjoying every single second of the pilot talking repeated rounds of trash about their coworkers.
“I am absolutely loving these pilot hot mic moments,” one of them wrote.
Others appreciated how the folks in the control tower gave the talkative pilot plenty of rope to verbally hang himself.
“They were being messy letting him finish the entire rant before chiming in,” one appreciative reader wrote.
And this from another: “I like how they let him talk before they even attempted to stop him.”
@matthewzieba Southwest pilot hot mics frequency and doesn’t realize it😱😱@Matt #aviation #southwestairlines #pilot #atc #announcement #avgeek #fyp ♬ original sound – Matt
The Daily Dot reached out to Southwest via email. We also reached out to Zieba via TikTok comment and direct message.
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