Toronto man pleads guilty to posing as a pilot for hundreds of free flights

Air Canada plane takes off at Pearson International Airport. Photo by Cole Burston /Getty Images

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A former Toronto flight attendant has pleaded guilty to posing as a pilot to take hundreds of free flights on U.S. airlines.

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Dallas Pokornik, 34, entered the plea Thursday in federal court in Honolulu, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Hawaii said in a news release Friday. He is to be sentenced Dec. 8 and faces up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to US$250,000 and a term of supervised release.

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Pokornik used a fictitious employee identification card to obtain the flights between January 2020 and Oct. 28, 2024, the office said. He also posed as a flight attendant, though he was not working as one at the time, according to court documents obtained by the National Post.

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A plea agreement seen by CBC News says the badge was “false and fictitious” and claimed he was still employed by the Canadian airline. He used it to obtain “travel benefits, including airline tickets that are reserved for pilots” from three companies the document identifies only as airlines 1, 2 and 3.

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Pokornik worked as a flight attendant at a Toronto-based airline from July 2017 to October 2019, according to court documents. He was never a pilot and did not have an airman’s certificate, according to the indictment.

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That airline has not been named in the indictment or by prosecutors in the nearly seven months since the case became public.

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Air Canada and Flair told the National Post in January that Pokornik had not been employed by them. Porter Airlines, which is headquartered in Toronto, and WestJet, based in Calgary, did not respond at the time. Porter said in an email Monday it was “unable to verify any details related to this story.”

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Porter Airlines and Sunwing Airlines were both headquartered in Toronto during the period Pokornik worked as a flight attendant. Sunwing flew its last flight in May 2025 and was integrated into WestJet.

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Pokornik also requested a jump seat in the cockpit, an extra seat normally used by off-duty pilots, prosecutors said when the indictment was announced. The U.S. attorney’s office told the National Post in January there is no information indicating whether he ever used it.

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The scheme ended after an employee of one of the U.S. airlines photographed the forged badge and the image was passed to Pokornik’s former employer, CBC reported. That carrier confirmed the badge was fake “because, among other things, it listed an expiration date in the year 2027,” according to the plea agreement.

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Pokornik agreed as part of the plea to pay restitution to three U.S.-based victim airlines, the office said. One of them is in Hawaii, according to CBC.

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“Travel security protocols help keep our citizens and visitors safe, and anyone who breaches those protocols should expect to be brought to justice,” U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson said in the release.