A former flight attendant for a Canadian airline has been arrested for posing as a pilot to obtain hundreds of free flights from U.S. airlines, according to investigators.
Dallas Pokornik, 33, of Toronto, was indicted on Oct. 2, 2025, for wire fraud, arrested in Panama and extradited to the United States, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Hawaii said in a statement on Tuesday.
Court documents obtained by The Associated Press say Pokornik was a flight attendant for an unspecified Toronto-based airline from 2017 to 2019.
According to the attorney’s office, court records show that over four years, Pokornik falsely claimed he was an airline pilot and used a false employee identification card to obtain hundreds of free flights with three different airlines.
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The indictment did not name the airlines but said they were based in Honolulu, Chicago and Fort Worth, Texas.
Representatives for Hawaiian Airlines, United Airlines and American Airlines, which are based in those cities, didn’t immediately comment about the allegations.
The indictment said that Pokornik would also request a jump seat in the cockpit — an area typically reserved for off-duty pilots — even though he was not a pilot and did not hold an airman’s certificate.
It was not clear from court documents whether he had ever ridden in a plane’s cockpit.
If convicted, Pokornik faces up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and a term of supervised release. A U.S. magistrate judge on Tuesday ordered Pokornik to remain in custody.
In a similar case last year, a Florida man was found guilty of wire fraud after posing as a flight attendant to book more than 120 free flights over the course of 6 years.
A federal judge found Tiron Alexander, 35, guilty of wire fraud and unlawfully entering a secure area of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport under false pretences.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Alexander booked free flights from 2018 to 2024 on an airline carrier’s website that were only available to pilots and flight attendants who worked for other airlines.
Alexander flew on 34 flights with the airline carrier “without paying for any of them by posing as a flight attendant who worked for other airlines,” according to a United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida press release.
Evidence at the trial also showed that Alexander impersonated a flight attendant on three other airlines and booked more than 120 free flights by falsely claiming to be one.
The carriers named in the court documents include American Airlines, Spirit Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines.
According to Alexander’s indictment, he stated that he had worked for an airline headquartered in Dallas since November 2015, but had never held a pilot or flight attendant position, meaning he was never eligible for the free flights.
— With files from The Associated Press and Global News’ Katie Scott
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