Ex‑Flight Attendant Charged With Posing as Pilot for Hundreds of Free U.S. Flights

Federal prosecutors in Hawaii say former Canadian flight attendant Dallas Pokornik, 33, used fake airline employee identification to pose as a commercial pilot and current crew member and obtain hundreds of free flights from U.S. airlines over a four‑year period. Pokornik, who worked for a Toronto‑based carrier from 2017 to 2019, is accused of reusing forged IDs from that airline to book tickets reserved for pilots and flight attendants on three U.S. carriers headquartered in Honolulu, Chicago and Fort Worth, Texas, and at least once asked to sit in the cockpit “jump seat” reserved for off‑duty pilots. A federal grand jury in Hawaii indicted him on wire‑fraud charges in October 2023, and he was recently arrested in Panama, extradited to the United States and on Tuesday pleaded not guilty in Honolulu federal court; a magistrate judge ordered him held pending trial. If convicted, he faces up to 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and supervised release. While court documents do not state whether he ever actually rode in the cockpit, the alleged scheme raises fresh questions about how easily employee‑travel and jump‑seat privileges can be abused in an era when aviation security is supposed to be tightly controlled.