The woman said she was told she had to return to her seat during landing in spite of the sexual harassment she reported because there were no other available seats.
  • BillCheddar@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    9 hours ago

    For the record, if that happens to you, stand up and be a public nuisance.

    “EXCUSE ME FLIGHT ATTENDANT BUT, can I please have a plastic spray shield to protect myself while this man masturbates midflight?”

    You can also involve the other passengers directly, if they don’t react to your obvious public call for help (above) by asking if anyone else sees this guy flogging the dolphin in Seat 33B?

    The more euphemisms you can use, the better!

    • GroundedGator@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      3 hours ago

      I’m not a woman so there is probably some bit of deep ingrained fear that I’m lacking here, but this was pretty much my first thought when I heard about this.

      Maybe public shaming was this guy’s kink, but I think being loud is the right move in this situation. There should have been pictures and videos of this guy.

  • Noxy@pawb.socialEnglish
    17·
    21 hours ago

    the fuck is wrong with going to the airplane bathroom. what a creep.

      • Noxy@pawb.socialEnglish
        3·
        4 hours ago

        genuinely it helps significantly relieve restless leg syndrome, which on a long flight can be downright torturous.

        but only if there’s not a line of people waiting of course

    • tazeycrazy@feddit.ukEnglish
      6·
      19 hours ago

      Sounds like they where landing. Hence she had to sit as well. The guy probably could have waited till he was in the airport.

      • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 hours ago

        He definitely could’ve waited. The flight was a regional trip and only an hour long.

        I bet he does it for the thrill. If he gets off on the publicity of the act and having other passengers be captive around him, then an airport bathroom would have defeated the purpose. He wanted his fellow passengers to witness what he did, like a flasher or exhibitionist.

  • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    60·
    1 day ago

    WTF, OP? I had to find an archive to get the rest of the text, and there was a lot more to the story. As usual, United has fully lived down to its abysmally low standards.

    For anyone else who has zero intentions of paying for a NBC subscription for one article, here’s an archive link. There are known problems with the site, but I could not find another archive that had the content. Use at your own discretion:

    https://archive.ph/xUswb

    • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      8 hours ago

      This story was on the WildFeed comm a couple of days ago… and, yeah, United did almost everything poorly or wrongly. Mind blowingly so.

    • slaacaa@lemmy.worldEnglish
      441·
      1 day ago

      Holy shit, this is infuriating. And then they try to gaslight her in email.

      That fucking guy should have been arrested and banned forever from the airline. I have no idea what the fuck the crew was thinking.

      I hope she can press charges and sue the airline, IANAL but it seems like she has a solid case, given how NBC judged her story to be true and newsworthy.

  • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    244·
    1 day ago

    Anyone who got past the paywall know what protocol was violated? From the information available, I’m sincerely unsure of what they could have done. Were they supposed to go up the aisle asking someone else to sit next to the masturbator? Were they supposed to swap one of them to one of the flight attendant seats? Can they even detain the guy after landing? I legitimately don’t know what they’re supposed to do in this situation, other than provide information for the victim to press charges

    • OrganicMustard@lemmy.worldEnglish
      522·
      1 day ago

      Public masturbation is illegal. The protocol is probably to inform the commander and law enforcement and ask the person to stop, and restraining him if he does not comply.

      • Carighan Maconar@piefed.worldEnglish
        121·
        1 day ago

        Yeah I suspect the “let him leave” wasn’t down to United in this case, if law enforcement doesn’t want to pick him up at deboarding they can’t do much. Hopefully he gets charged, but it’d require the police to detain him on touchdown.

          • phx@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            13 hours ago

            Snagging him right at the arrival gate seems pretty reasonable, and certainly security has done so after flights for many various offenses in the past.

            But yeah, at the very least they should know who the guy was and be able to provide information to the authorities in order to press charges.

          • Carighan Maconar@piefed.worldEnglish
            4·
            1 day ago

            Yeah that was my point, sorry if I expressed it badly. That he’ll probably be charged, but detainment if warranted would have come down to the police picking him up, related to a criminal charge and independent of a civil case by United.

      • nightwatch_admin@lemmy.worldEnglish
        83·
        1 day ago

        Well, that’s probably why they let him leave, nobody wants to touch that guy with a ten foot pole, let alone restrain him.

            • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
              35·
              1 day ago

              Yes, they duct tape people who pose a threat of death or serious injury to passengers and/or crew.

              Someone with deficient stealth-jacking skills disgusts and offends passengers and crew, but doesn’t threaten injury. Restraints are not justified.

              There is a rather large community of people recording and storing radio communication between pilots and ATC. Chance are pretty good we’ll hear whether the pilots requested law enforcement at the gate. If they failed to request law enforcement, that would be on the pilots and airline. If law enforcement failed to respond, that would be on the cops.

              • forkDestroyer@infosec.pubEnglish
                31·
                1 day ago

                Someone with deficient stealth-jacking skills disgusts and offends passengers and crew, but doesn’t threaten injury. Restraints are not justified.

                If you’re hit with someone’s spunk nonconsensually, I think that counts as injury or some approximate of that, legally.

                • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
                  21·
                  24 hours ago

                  It’s certainly harm, and justified law enforcement intervention. But it’s not a “open the emergency exit door in flight” level of harm. Nobody is threatened with death or grievous bodily harm here. Forceful intervention would increase that risk, rather than reducing it.

      • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.worldEnglish
        520·
        1 day ago

        Restraining him is almost definitely not something the flight crew should attempt. Flight crew are not trained for this and could get injured. It could also easily escalate the situation and the last thing you want is a fight on board while in air. That could cause danger to the plane or other passengers. Asking him to stop and detaining him after landing would probably be the protocol.

          • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.worldEnglish
            41·
            1 day ago

            I am technically trained in CPR. You absolutely shouldn’t rely on my CPR skills if there is another choice. Wrangling a deranged person is difficult even for people with ample training and experience (e.g. cops), let alone for flight crew with very basic training. If the person is not a danger to himself or others, there is no reason they would escalate the situation during flight.

          • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
            33·
            1 day ago

            “deranged” meaning “posing a physical threat to passengers and crew”.

            Stealth-jacking is certainly offensive, but it is a disgusting offense, not a threatening offense.

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      19 hours ago

      I feel like an attendant should have swapped seats with her. Because a) it’s the right thing to do and b) to cover the airline’s ass a bit.

      • CrimeIsLegalNow@ani.socialEnglish
        10·
        17 hours ago

        Believe it or not, you’re not required to subject yourself to sex crimes as part of your employment.

        Realistically the best response was probably just letting the passenger stand with the crew in their little cubby? I’m sure there’s laws and rules that the crew thought prevented that, because most people think there isn’t flexibility unless you’re a billionaire.

        What absolutely should have happened regardless was calling the police and security.

        • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
          2·
          18 hours ago

          Flight attendants have duties to attend to in case of an emergency upon landing. For example, opening doors and deploying evacuation slides. For that, they have to be at their stations.

          If there were extra, off-duty crew aboard, that would have been reasonable. They could have asked if they had any law enforcement personnel aboard, or asked for volunteers.

            • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
              1·
              8 hours ago

              There almost certainly wasn’t one. There’s only about 3000 air marshals total, but over 10,000 airline flights per day. If there was one on the flight, this guy would have been taken into custody. I’d be surprised if 1 in 10 flights had an air marshal aboard.