Aero Dili posts Josh Cahill’s passport online
This incident involves Josh Cahill and Aero Dili. For context, Josh Cahill is a popular YouTuber who reviews flights, while Aero Dili is a small airline based in East Timor, which was founded in 2017.In September 2023, Cahill took a flight on Aero Dili from Bali to East Timor, which he posted about on YouTube. He described the flight as a “disaster,” as he had issues at check-in, and then he claims he got “the worst food poisoning” from the flight.
Recently the country manager for Aero Dili, Acacia Mota, made a post on Facebook about Cahill with some wild claims. He states that Cahill reached out before his flight, asking for a free flight, free accommodation, a food allowance, and $50,000 in cash, in exchange for a positive review.
Those are some outrageous claims, so what proof did Mota provide? Well, instead of sharing a screenshot of the alleged extortion attempt, he shared a picture of Cahill’s passport, with all the details showing. Cahill isn’t sure how he got that picture, though it may have been from during check-in (given that there were issues), or from his arrival in the country.
Cahill reached out to the airline regarding his passport being posted online, but the airline never responded. So Cahill then reached out to law enforcement in East Timor, and was informed that the country has no data protection laws, so what the airline was doing wasn’t illegal, and therefore the airline was within its rights.
Cahill states that the airline could post the passport and credit card details of any passenger online without any punishment. Aero Dili is supposed to start flights to Singapore shortly, so Cahill is asking his viewers to reach out to Singapore’s Minister of Transport to encourage him to block this flight, given the disregard that the airline has for basic data protection standards.
