A Hawaiian Airlines flight was grounded for 90 minutes when a high school student accidentally shared what appeared to be a crime scene photo with at least fifteen other iPhone-using passengers via AirDrop.
Hawaiian Airlines flight 23 was taxiing just before taking off from Oakland for Maui this weekend when at least fifteen passengers randomly received a photo. The image appeared to show the crime scene of a dead child. As reported by BuzzFeed, the alarmed passengers shared the photo with the flight crew and when the pilots were made aware, they returned the plane to the gate.
The incident occurred when a 15-year-old high school student tried to share a mock crime scene photo from her medical-biology class with her mother. The photo (seen below), showed a mannequin lying face down with evidence markers The passengers that received the photo confused the mannequin for a dead child.
The girl apparently wasn’t sure of the name of her mom’s iPhone, and sent it to a number of devices present on the plane.
Alameda County Sgt. Ray Kelly:
“She was telling her mom about the class, and her mom supposedly just got a new iPhone,” Kelly said. “People were a little alarmed by it.”
He added that the girl was “very embarrassed” and “she was actually crying, so we had to console her a little bit — it was OK, it was a mistake.”
When questioning ended, the teen and mother duo had missed the flight, but were rebooked for flight on the following day. The flight turned out to be a bit of a flight from hell, as while it did make it to Maui, a container of pepper spray exploded while en route.
