A woman has shared how a male passenger on an Air New Zealand flight allegedly harassed her using the plane’s direct messaging service.
In a recent video posted to TikTok, Georgia Davis, @georgiamaydavis, documented herself sitting on a plane along with a text caption that read: “There’s no way this happened on my flight.”
She then directed her camera towards the screen in front of her, where she received a seat chat message from a passenger who went by “Chad” and who was sitting in seat 4C.
The clip showed that Chad started the conversation by asking Davis how she was doing. After simply responding with “Lol, good,” Chad then asked: “Where u stayin..I’m tryna hit that.”
In response to the inappropriate message, Davis could be seen with her hand on her face, with a text caption on the video reading: “SHUT UP.”
She then showed that she’d responded to Chad’s message with “what!” to which he then told her that he’d “[probably] come say hey” to her later. Davis concluded the video by showing herself blocking Chad on the plane’s message service.
In the caption, she noted how she wasn’t interested in speaking to the passenger and wrote: “You lost me at ‘Chad.’”
As of 15 August, the video has more than 3.8m views, with Davis revealing in the comments that the seat-to-seat messages occurred while she was flying via Air New Zealand.
In the comments, many viewers revealed that they too were concerned by the situation, with one person writing: “Oh yay another thing to worry about when travelling alone.”
Another said: “I would feel so trapped.”
However, others, like Davis, took the opportunity to joke about men with the name Chad having a bad reputation.
“Is there such a thing as a Chad who isn’t a Chad?” one person wrote, while another said: “Always a Chad.”
“Thinking about the person next to him watching him type this,” someone else added.
Others questioned how people could message each other on planes, with one person writing: “WHAT TYPE OF PLANE HAS A COMMUNICATION SYSTEM.”
Some TikTok users also shared how they’ve been in situations where they received unwanted messages while travelling.
“THIS HAPPENED ONCE WHEN I WAS 10 WITH SOME GUY THAT SAT SOME SEATS BEHIND ME,” someone else wrote. MY MOM DIDN’T LET ME LOOK AT HIM.”
“When I was on a train in Germany, a guy airdropped me a message saying [that I] was cute LOL,” another added.
Speaking to The Independent, an Air New Zealand spokesperson explained what the purpose of their on-flight chat services is and how it can be beneficial to passengers.
“Air New Zealand’s inflight seat chat service is designed to support customers who are travelling together but are not sitting together. This enables them to talk to their friends, family or anyone they’re travelling with on the flight without having to leave the comfort of their seat,” they said. “This feature has been onboard our aircraft for a number of years and automatically prevents offensive words such as swear words from being used. Customers can also block or ignore seat chats as they wish.’”
“If customers do have any concerns with messages they receive from other travellers, we encourage them to raise it with our crew immediately,” they added.
The Independent has contacted Davis for comment.
