Flight attendants, ticket agents and gate agents are told they need to keep their eyes open for human trafficking. And if they see something, say something.
The problem is that they aren’t experts in knowing what to look for. By law, they get annual training on “recognizing and responding to potential human trafficking victims.” The DOT’s Blue Lightning program – the whole program, not just the part on what actually to look for – is just 25 minutes.
Often, crew wind up relying on their own prejudice and gut. And that leads to plenty of false positives, like American Airlines accusing a black musician of trafficking his white kids or accusing a black social worker of trafficking because she was traveling with white kids and reporting a husband for trafficking his wife because they were difference races.
Delta has accused grandparents of trafficking their mixed race grandson. In one of the most absurd cases I’ve heard, a Frontier AIrlines flight attendant invented abuse, attacked a sleeping father, and separated him from his son after being inspired by one of these classes.
So the story of a new lawsuit filed last week against Delta Air Lines and their wholly-owned subsidiary Endeavor Air doesn’t surprise me.
Madison Cupp was 13 years old when she flew with her family from Memphis to Newport News via Atlanta on December 18, 2019 for a Coast Guard training graduation.
On the connecting flight to Newport News, she became scared during turbulence and cried. Her father comforted her. A flight attendant decided this looked suspicious, and that he might be trafficking the girl, and reported it to the captain. Police met the aircraft on arrival.
- The father was just comforting her. Her mother was right there. So were her grandparents.
- Police separated the father from the rest of his family, read him his Miranda rights, and questioned him.
- They questioned hte girl as well, asking her if her father hurt or inappropriately touched her.
- Police found no probable cause to charge or arrest anyone.
She says she was traumatized by the ordeal and is suing for $2 million in compensatory damages plus $350,000 in punitive damages. And this is on top of a lawsuit filed by her father in 2022.
Delta’s best defense is that the reporting was done in good faith and that police did the questioning not the airline. They aren’t immune from suit – in Virginia, good faith child abuse reports are shielded from liability if reported to the Department of Social Services or the state’s child abuse hotline – not to the police.
The Virginia Supreme Court refused to dismiss her father’s case as a result. Still, all they did was tell the police they had an honest suspicison and what the police did with that information was out of their hands. There was no arrest and no physical injury. Punitive damages will be tough here.
Since Delta didn’t get the father’s complaint entirely dismissed and likely won’t get the daughter’s either, it seems like a good candidate to settle. They’ll first probably try to consolidate the cases based on a common set of facts.
While the statute of limitations would normally have lapsed on the girl’s suit, it was tolled while she was a minor. And now she has the state Supreme Court’s decision that Delta doesn’t get immunity for their report by calling the police.
I’m not sure liability for Delta makes sense here, but there are a lot more cases of people being harassed and singled out, often for reasons of prejudice, than there are cases where any good has been done.
- The closest story to where a flight attendant actually stopped a case of human trafficking was a decade ago on a flight from Honduras where a crewmember saw a couple carrying a lethargic boy who appeared in pain. A pilot alerted authorities and a Miami customs official later told the flight attendant she had made “the right call” and the boy was safely intercepted. No outcome was ever reported and there was no known prosecution.
- There’s a story I’ve been told often comes up in trainings about a supposed success on an Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle to San Francisco in 2011 (long before modern required trafficking trainings) where a flight attendant noticed a disheveled teenage girl traveling with a defensive older man, left a note in the lavatory for the girl asking if she needed help, and received a plea for help in response. Snopes calls this one “unproven.”
- I haven’t been able to find any flight attendant human trafficking interventions in the 8 years since this mandatory training has been in effect that has stopped an actual trafficking case. Cindy McCain once fabricate a story about catching a toddler being trafficked at the Phoenix airport, though.
Bruce Schneier says that when you have amateurs doing security, you get amateur security. That’s true here. While there are private programs as well, 400,000 people in the aviation industry have gone through Blue Lightning training. That’s all of 25 minutes covering “What is Human Trafficking? / Indicators of Human Trafficking Activity / Reporting Suspected Human Trafficking / Indicator Challenge.” That doesn’t seem to accomplish very much that’s positive.
(HT: Paddle Your Own Kanoo)
They deserve their fate. Never should have taken it that far. Scum bag flight attendant, trash airline. The only way way to make trash learn is to make them suffer.
Delta should be sued but this isn’t remotely worth $2 million.
Airlines should get out of this fake police function. They don’t have the qualifications or incentives. Hopefully the jury in this case will hammer Delta to expedite this process.
This is why most hate lawyers and our civil justice system. The FA acted in good faith, the police responded and no charges were filed. No harm – no foul but, of course, we have an ambulance chaser. Frankly, I hope Delta sees it through and wins. These type of suits should be summarily dismissed.
@Retired Gambler — Nah, let folks have representation; no need to shoot the mercenary, I mean, messenger…
@Tim Dunn — Uh oh, spaghetti O’s… how’s this gonna play out on Seeking Alpha…
@L3 — Let’s double-down, instead. On Air China, they have a uniformed security agent on every flight, and an ominous message after the safety briefing about ‘security’ and ‘surveillance’ and ‘re-education’ (whoopsies, threw that last one in; that’s only for flights to Xinjiang…)
Interesting story about Cindy McCain. Makes sense since she also fabricated famine in Gaza (where more kids are obese than in Israel). Unfortunately, a lot of NGOs have been corrupted and abuse the halo they have to do the opposite of good.
This is not a simple issue.
What’s the proper ratio of human traffickers going unquestioned to falsely identified non-traffickers? Should airlines let 100 of them go unchallenged rather than falsely detain one innocent adult? Or 10 to 1? Or 1 to 1?
Regardless of your opinion on the proper ratio, how does a lawsuit help determine what the ratio is or should be, rather on simply argue that it needs to decrease from whatever it currently is? Perfection is a fantasy, not a standard.
FA should be charged for false reporting of a crime. A father consoling his daughter is not and has never been a crime in the United States. I hope the FA was included in the suit a big paycheck is awarded to discourage the FA and the airlines from making false accusations against innocent people.
@Common Sense — If it’s such a land of plenty, why not move there! /s
@nsx at FlyerTalk – since this training became a legal requirement even proponents do not identify a single case where flight attendants have correctly called out a trafficker.