Thailand’s budget carrier, Nok Air, has issued an apology for inappropriate crash jokes made during a pilot’s text conversation with friends.
The screenshot of the group chat was somehow leaked online (as everything does these days), and shows the pilot’s friends encouraging him to crash the plane he was going to fly, which was carrying Thailand’s former Prime Minister.
Over the weekend, the first officer took a photo of Yingluck Shinawatra as she was walking on the tarmac and sent it to friends through a text message. It wrote accompanied the picture with the text: “there’s a prey on board”.
After the seeing the photo of the former PM who was ousted in a coup in 2014, one friend said, “oooh, go for it” before another friend chimed in with, “please do a CFIT”.
A CFIT, according to news.com.au, means “controlled flight into terrain” or a controlled crash.
The conversation ended when a third person stepped in, saying: “very, very important person, land safely”.
Nok Air’s CEO, Patee Sarasin, took to Twitter to issue a personal apology for the leaked conversation, which has received widespread criticism.
In the tweet, he said “this kind of behaviour is introlerable”.
“I will personally call Yingluck and apologise, Nok Air has no politics, I won’t stand this.”
Patee Sarasin, Nok Air CEO
Yingluck said she hoped the incident would be an example to keep “personal attitudes” separate from “professional services”.
