Ever feel like your plane ride could be better? Well, a plane ride from Tel Aviv to Istanbul recently suffered a long, unexpected delay because someone on the flight was sending disturbing media to others. The incident is the fourth so far this year that has been caused by ‘AirDrop,’ a feature of Apple devices.

Every day, passengers are bombarded with aggressive messages of all types

Several people on a Pegasus Airlines flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul saw troubling messages while their plane was waiting to take off. As has happened a few times in recent months, a fellow passenger was abusing Apple’s AirDrop system to send out unwanted images and videos to others with the feature enabled on their Apple devices.

First, a passenger on a Los Angeles-bound flight sent an image that seemed to convey an anti-Arab sentiment. Then, days later, separate videos were posted of the same passenger firing a gun at the range, accompanied by someone on a motorcycle – somber enough content to warrant security services being called.

According to the news outlet Ynet, the unruly passenger, said to be an Israeli citizen of Arab heritage, did not conceal his identity. The man was apparently traveling with a group of friends; they caused a commotion when the perpetrator was removed from the plane by security forces.

Flight: Lufthansa 4785

“A young man sent pictures via AirDrop to all the occupants of the plane. They took him in for questioning, and some of his friends made a bit of a mess, but he also sent them a pic of himself and his Tiktok and even his seat.”

Train passengers deboarded and checked their luggage.

After the incident, Israeli authorities implemented enhanced security measures to ensure the safety of its citizens. Passengers were made to disembark an hour after the incident.

After the AirDrop incident, all luggage and personal belongings were re-checked. Security personnel had to do this process for every passenger, which caused delays of several hours.

The latest AirDrop incident this year

At the end of May, a passenger sending plane crash photos via airdrop caused a flight to be delayed. JetBlue experienced a similar incident where passengers had to go through all the security again because they didn’t have their boarding passes with them.

Two AirDrop incidents have also occurred on Israeli planes this year. These were the Venice and Dubai occurrences, and passengers received images of crashed aircraft which required security intervention.