It was shortly before 10 p.m. on June 16 when Aubrey Lane boarded American Airlines Flight 1280 at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, eager to meet up with family in New York for what she described as a bucket-list trip.
Several hours into the red-eye flight, she got up to use the bathroom.There, Lane said she was trapped in the lavatory and raped by a noticeably intoxicated man who’d been sitting next to her during the flight.
The following hours were a blur of trauma and confusion, Lane said, as she was moved to a seat toward the back of the plane, met by police officers when she got off the plane at JFK International Airport and then transported to a nearby hospital.I was feeling overwhelmed … all of a sudden, I was thrown in a middle seat, bawling. On top of being sad and hurt and scared, I was also embarrassed,” Lane said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News.
The News does not typically name victims of sexual assault, but is using Lane’s name with her permission, and after having reviewed her booking receipt, hospital admission documents and her correspondence with the FBI and American Airlines.
Lane, a 31-year-old real estate professional who lives in Colorado, is speaking out in hopes that American will take steps to make sure it doesn’t happen to others.No comprehensive statistics are kept on on-board sexual assaults. But a 2017 survey by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA of nearly 2,000 members found that 1 in 5 had received a report of passenger-on-passenger sexual assault while working a flight.
Most said they had no knowledge of written guidance or training on how to handle such reports, according to the union.
Sexual misconduct aboard aircraft — whether crude verbal harassment, unwanted touching, or worse — is a problem that has persisted for years, directed toward both passengers and a predominantly female flight attendant workforce. Known instances of rape aboard aircraft are exceedingly rare, with several industry insiders and attorneys who have been closely tracking the issue for the past few years unaware of other publicly reported cases.Scattered media reports have documented individual cases of sexual misconduct, but there’s been little in the way of coordinated action by the industry and regulators to measure or tackle the issue.
Victims of sexual abuse on planes speaking out could push the airline industry closer to a reckoning it has long avoided, experts said, as cases of sexual misconduct dominate headlines in Hollywood, Washington, D.C., New York and elsewhere in the #MeToo era.Nuisance claim’
Nine months later, Lane’s case is still in the hands of the FBI with little visible sign of progress. The agency did not return a request for comment.Lane offered to meet with American to discuss what happened, her attorneys said. But the airline declined, in part due to the ongoing FBI investigation, according to the December letter. Lane has retained legal counsel and is planning to sue the Fort Worth-based carrier.
American described Lane’s allegations as a “nuisance claim” in a December letter that offered her $5,000 after her attorneys brought her allegation to the airline.
American spokesman Ross Feinstein declined to comment specifically on Lane’s case, citing the ongoing FBI investigation. He said the carrier regularly works with law enforcement agencies when a crime is reported on its aircraft.He said the company has put new procedures in place in recent months that call for proactive passenger outreach from the customer relations department after reports of onboard disturbances, including sexual misconduct.
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The alcohol factor
Lane was sitting in a window seat she paid $20 to select shortly before departure when her assailant — whose identity she still does not know — sat down next to her and began talking to her almost immediately.My first thought was this guy’s drunk. He was super chatty,” she said. “I’ve flown a lot. I’m used to people saying hello. This is the most anyone has sat down and started talking to me.”
She said she could smell the alcohol on his breath, even as he continued to be served drinks during the flight.
Her attorneys say Lane’s assailant never should have been allowed on board in his intoxicated state and shouldn’t have been served more drinks.
Feinstein, the American spokesman, said the carrier does not allow “knowingly” intoxicated passengers to board aircraft, and flight attendants have the discretion to stop serving alcohol to a passenger.
Alcohol has been a recurring theme in recent reports of sexual misconduct on planes. More broadly, it’s a factor in one-third of reported passenger disturbances on aircraft, according to 2016 figures from the International Air Transportation Association.
“American’s ultimate responsibility is the safety of their passengers,” said Lane’s attorney, James McDonough of Downs, McDonough and Cowan law firm in Durango, Colo. “Based on the actions of American Airlines’ flight crew, the safety of Aubrey was not their No. 1 priority.”How big is the problem?
It’s not clear how widespread the problem of in-flight sexual misconduct is on U.S. airlines that carry an average of 2.1 million passengers a day. Sara Nelson, head of the largest flight attendants union in the U.S., is worried it might be getting worse.
“It has to do with seats being closer together, more people being packed together in a tight space. You’d think that with more people, it would be more difficult. But it makes it easier for the perpetrator … there’s less line of sight,” said Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. “There’s fewer flight attendants, all the airlines have cut back staffing. … That has a real strain in many ways.”