Sex assaults on planes soar, but fixes few

Prosecutions, data lacking to address problem

FORT WORTH — Aubrey Lane was flying from Phoenix to New York when the man next to her started ordering multiple drinks at once.

As he became intoxicated, he started to make inappropriate comments to Lane, according to a federal lawsuit she filed against American Airlines in October 2018. At one point, he grabbed her face and kissed her, a witness said in an email to the airline.

After ordering four vodkas and two beers, the man was visibly drunk. He got up to go to the bathroom. Lane, taking the opportunity to also get up, went to the women’s bathroom.

The man forced himself into the bathroom with Lane and raped her, she said in the lawsuit.

Sexual assault on airplanes is a growing problem, according to data from the FBI. But no one seems to know how much of a problem it is.

“It’s definitely not getting better,” said Paul Hudson, president of Flyers Rights, an organization that represents airline passengers. “If there aren’t reforms, I think it’ll get worse.”

According to the FBI, in-flight sexual assaults rose from 2014 to 2017. In fiscal year 2014, 38 cases of inflight sexual assault were reported to the FBI. In the 2017 fiscal year, that number increased to 63. Reported assaults dropped to 39 in the 2018 fiscal year, the

New York Times reported.

In a recent case, a Houston woman was flying to Paris when she took a prescribed painkiller to fall asleep. She woke up to the man next to her sexually assaulting her. She tried to remove his hand, but he made a threatening gesture to silence her, according to the woman’s lawsuit against American Airlines.

She said in the suit that she told crew members, but they told her nothing could be done.

In response to that suit, American Airlines said its policy requires a crew member to contact law enforcement if misconduct is reported on an aircraft.

The FBI is the leading agency for investigating misconduct in the air.

In June 2018, the FBI said the number of sexual assaults reported during commercial airline flights was increasing, and the number of actual cases could be higher than those reported.

However, more recent data and details on in-flight sexual misconduct are difficult to obtain.

The Star-Telegram requested investigative reports on sexual assault on planes, statistics on the number of sexual assaults reported and data on those assaults through the Freedom of Information Act. The FBI denied the request, citing rules that a federal agency does not have to create records or conduct research on requested data.

Hudson said the FBI has denied the group’s requests for data for several years.

“They know how many investigations they did, they know how many prosecutions they had,” Hudson said. “Their answer is, ‘It’s not in the standard database, so we can’t help you.’”

Hudson said the increase in overnight flights, longdistance flights and flight attendants over-serving passengers alcohol increase the likelihood of sexual misconduct in the air.

He also said the FBI does not prioritize the assaults.

“They’re organized to deal with white-collar, organized crime, terrorism, things of that nature,” he said.

Every day, 44,000 flights carry 2.7 million airline passengers across the world, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

If one of those passengers is assaulted or harassed, they have no official avenue to report the incident. A passenger might tell a flight attendant what happened, who may report it to the captain, who might tell a ground supervisor, who then may or may not report it to the police department where the plane is landed.

And then maybe the FBI will look into it.

“You have a four- or five-step process to get a proper investigation,” Hudson said. “In most cases, nothing occurs. Through those steps, the plane has landed, people have left and the possibility for proper investigation, much less prosecution, is gone.”

Unlike most industries, airlines do not have a legal mandate to report criminal activity, such as sexual assault.

In October 2018, President Donald Trump signed the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, which established a task force assigned to examine the problem.