Crossing the Line at Altitude: Passenger Sexual Misconduct in the Skies, 1999-2021

ABSTRACT

Over the past decade, a range of news outlets and social media platforms has increasingly featured reports of airline passenger misconduct, particularly those involving verbal and physical assault. Less attention has been paid to passenger sexual misconduct. To improve our understanding of the nature and types of air passenger sexual misconduct cases, we draw on data from 77 incidents reported from 1999 to 2021 to develop a multi-classification scheme of misconduct and examine the precipitating factors as well as related circumstances involved. Our findings demonstrate passenger sexual misconduct takes three forms – sexual assault, sexual deviance, and sexual harassment – and highlight the complexity of circumstances, factors, and types of victims (i.e. passengers, flight attendants, and crew) involved in these reports.

KEYWORDS:

• Airline passenger misconduct
• sexual assault
• sexual harassment
• sexual deviance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. According to Mancini et al. (2022, 5) the #MeToo movement emphasizes the following assumptions (a): all victims should be believed (b); the official reporting of sex offenses is low because of victim-blaming attitudes and stigma; and (c) institutional and criminal justice responses to sexual assault are often insufficient to ensuring justice for victims.

2. Support for this claim is also found in our analyses of data from news accounts and other online sources (see Appendix).

3. Although it could be presumed that reports by flight crewmembers would largely capture extreme cases of sexual misconduct, the ASRS data suggest the problem of passenger sexual misconduct takes different forms.

4. The written narratives were taken verbatim from the ASRS reports. We made only minor edits for clarification, e.g., flt changed to flight; pax to passenger; FA to flight attendant.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lynne M. Vieraitis

Lynne M. Vieraitis is a professor in the Criminology and Criminal Justice Program at The University of Texas at Dallas. Her research interests include identity theft, crime policy, and inequality and violence. She is co-author (with Heith Copes) of the book, Identity Thieves: Motives and Methods published by Northeastern University Press.

Sheryl Skaggs

Sheryl Skaggs is a professor of sociology in the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas. Her research primarily focuses on workplace diversity, particularly within managerial and executive positions.

Gaetan Doré

Gaëtan Doré is a lecturer in criminology at Coventry University, UK. His research focuses on personality traits and disorders as linked to interpersonal violence, antisocial attitudes, and offender decision-making. He received his Ph.D. from the Criminology and Criminal Justice Program at the University of Texas at Dallas.