A Delta passenger claims the pilot of his flight hit on him using Grindr. (iStock)
A passenger onboard a Delta plane was creeped out after a pilot allegedly messaged him on Grindr during their flight.
JP Thorn, a 27-year-old college student, told The Post that the strange interaction happened while he was flying from Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Chicago in August. When his flight landed, his cellular service returned and he noticed a new notification on the gay dating app.
“I see you’re on my flight,” the message read. “Enjoy the ride to Chicago.”
“My reaction was I knew I needed to get off this plane as fast as I can,” Thorn, who’s studying communications at Hamline University, told The Post. “I’ve had some weird experiences with proximity stuff on Grindr.”
Turns out, Thorn told The Post that the message was sent 30 minutes prior to the plane’s landing, which meant he received the message during their 90-minute trip. Thorn said that according to the gay dating app, the man was 90 feet away from him, and the man’s profile features a photo of the sky taken from the cockpit.
“My deductive reasoning led me to believe that he was the pilot,” Thorn told The Post. “I messaged him back and he told me that he was one of the pilots.”
Though Thorn was weirded out by the online exchange, his anxieties were alleviated after he left the plane and walked to his connecting flight. He continued to chat with the pilot on Grindr, whom Thorn ultimately described as a “nice guy.”
“He asked me about our flight, how it was on the way, and [the conversation] was really standard,” Thorn said. “I said there was no turbulence, then he made a joke about turbulence.”
Thorn deleted his app when he landed in Nashville and has lost touch with the aviator ever since. Though Thorn said that if he didn’t have to catch his connecting flight, he would’ve met the captain.
“I meet up with people all the time from Grindr,” Thorn said. “I think I totally would have met him for coffee.”
On Sunday, Thorn uploaded a screenshot of their conversation on Twitter, which quickly turned into a social media sensation and now has more than 218 thousand likes.
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“I got a lot of people saying I should’ve met up with pilots because they make a lot of money,” he said. “That was pretty funny.”
And Thorn said that he would fly with Delta again.
“It’s the only airline I tend to use,” he said. “I don’t think they get into too much controversy.”
Delta didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
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