The co-pilot of the missing Malaysian jet once let a pair of blond women from Australia fly in the cockpit in blatant violation of his airline’s rules.
Aviator Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, and another unidentified pilot spotted the gals waiting to return home from a wild vacation in Thailand and invited them up front for the flight from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Australia’s “A Current Affair” reported.
After friends Jonti Roos and Jaan Maree boarded the plane, a flight attendant escorted them through the cabin and into the cockpit, where they spent the entire December 2011 trip — including takeoff and landing.
“Throughout the whole flight they were talking to us. They were actually smoking through the flight, which I don’t think they’re allowed to be doing,” Roos, 27, said of the two pilots.
“They were taking photos with us in the cockpit while they were flying. I was just completely shocked.”
Some of the snapshots show the pretty young women wearing the pilots’ gold-trimmed hats, and posing with their arms around the smug flyboys.
Roos, a South African living in Melbourne, called Hamid and his colleague “possibly a little bit sleazy.”
“They asked us if we could arrange our trip to stay in Kuala Lumpur for a few nights . . . [so] they could take us out,” she said.
Roos said she felt safe the entire time.
Most international airlines bar passengers from the cockpit during flights, and a Malaysia Airlines spokesman told the show that company policy strictly prohibits such visits.
Roos said she and Maree were standing in line near the boarding gate when Abdul Hamid and the other pilot passed by, then did a double take, then “came back and asked if we would like to sit with them in the cockpit during the flight, so obviously we said yes.”
“I think anyone would have jumped at the opportunity,” she said.
Roos contacted the TV show after realizing she had met a member of the flight crew of the Boeing 777 that vanished Saturday.