Credit card safety at 30,000 feet

Maybe it was the Bloody Mary that got Jean Shanley into trouble on a recent flight from Louisville to Las Vegas.
 
She paid for the $5 beverage with her American Express card and then slipped the card back into her pocketbook, where it stayed for the rest of her vacation. When she returned home, Shanley, a sales associate for a department store in Burlington, Ky., found $1,300 in fraudulent charges on the card — and she suspects that Southwest Airlines is responsible for the security breach.

Travelers are easy prey for “carders,” who take illegal credit card impressions in a crime called cloning or skimming. Airline passengers such as Shanley may feel extra vulnerable, because on a plane, plastic is often the only payment option for beverages, meals or duty-free items. (Airlines euphemistically call it a “cashless environment.”)

Apart from the timing of the charges, several other clues point to Southwest as the responsible party. First, Shanley says, the flight attendant took 15 minutes to return her card; and second, she’d never had a fraudulent credit card charge until she made the in-flight purchase. “I think it’s strange that the charges showed up two days after that flight, and I have never had a problem before,” she says.

Southwest says it isn’t responsible. “Cardholders tend to focus on the last known legitimate charge as being the point of compromise,” airline spokeswoman Linda Rutherford says. “However, our security folks advise us that it could be any number of merchants where the card was used prior to the Southwest flight.” She says Southwest has “no reason” to suspect the crew on Shanley’s flight but agreed to forward her complaint to management “for their review.”

Shanley’s credit card company reversed the bogus charges.

But Shanley’s problem raises two bigger questions for air travelers who want to buy something on board: Is it safe? And is there a way to protect your card?

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