Sex abuse during flights a blind spot for airlines
MUMBAI (Reuters) — When a 17-year-old Bollywood actress took to social media this week alleging she was sexually assaulted on an airplane, she appeared to catch the airline industry off guard.
Her allegations — denied by the man accused of the assault on a domestic Vistara flight in India — triggered online outrage and prompted a rare police investigation.
The incident, coming shortly after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi, a Silicon Valley executive, said via social media that she had been a victim of sexual harassment on an Alaska Airlines flight, highlights a risk to airlines: they need to do more than just respond once an incident goes public and their brand comes under fire.
“It’s a global issue and every country has to deal with the fallout,” said Saj Ahmad, a London-based analyst at Strategic Aero Research.
“Being prepared to address passenger concerns rather than being reactive to social media complaints will arguably help address these problems in real time,” Ahmad said.
Most people asked about in-flight sexual misconduct, against passengers and crew — including airlines, flight attendant unions and airline training consultants — said incidents are vastly under-reported.
Last year, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), airlines globally reported just 211 instances of “inappropriate sexual behavior.” That is among 3.8 billion passengers on more than 40 million flights.
In a statement, IATA said fewer than half those cases were reported to the authorities, which is why there are so few police investigations.
“Victims are required to press charges, the airline can’t do that for them,” said Taylor Garland, spokeswoman for the US Association of Flight Attendants.
“We believe underreporting occurs.”
Andrew Herdman, director general of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines, said the IATA data needs to be viewed with caution “as event descriptions are not always standardized” and there are “significant variations in the level of voluntary reporting by airlines.”
“With regard to incidents involving sexual harassment, ranging from verbal intimidation to actual physical assault, these are relatively rare, but always taken seriously,” he said.
Among nearly two dozen major airlines contacted, only Japan Airlines gave actual figures on incidents of sexual harassment on its flights: about 10-20 a year, with police called in on some cases.
Suhaila Hassan, head of cabin crew at Malaysia-based budget airline AirAsia, said there had been no reported cases of passenger-on-passenger harassment, though there were occasional instances of cabin crew being harassed. She said it was possible some incidents were not reported to the airline.
“That could be the case because of the culture. People feel shy and embarrassed if revealed,” she said.
The airlines’ comments fit with broader studies that estimate three of every four sexual harassment incidents in the workplace in US go unreported. In Asia, there is even less of a culture of public discourse on sexual harassment.
“We tend to have a culture where people don’t generally speak up,” said Jason Tan, a former Singapore Airlines flight attendant who works as a consultant training cabin crews in Asia and the Middle East. “Victims tend to suffer in silence,” he said.