Young Woman Claims Man Groped Her For An Hour On A Flight, Cabin Crew Told Her To “Stay Quiet”

An 18 year old woman says she was groped by a male passenger on her Spirit Airlines flight for an hour. She took video! And she says flight attendants told her to “sit down and stay quiet” when she reported it.

She was traveling with family but they weren’t seated together. That is especially likely to happen when you don’t pay extra for seat assignments on Spirit. And, it seems, she made the blunder of switching seats with another passenger and winding up in a window seat in front of our pervert.

The man in her video can be seen reaching his hand towards her through the gap between the window and middle seat. She says he “kept touching her arms and breasts.” He was in his 50s or 60s, according to the woman. And she reports that when she showed video of a man to a flight attendant, “she was told to ‘sit down and stay quiet'” after the man denied it.

While she was reading her book before take-off, she said she felt a slight touch on the side of her breast, as if something was ‘caressing’ her.

She continued: ‘I wonder what this feeling could be, it was really subtle, and I reached my hand over and touched his finger tips.’…I realised that the man behind me is touching me, so I move my arm out of the way. ‘I thought it would stop there because he knows that I know that he was touching me because our fingertips literally touched.’

After a few minutes, she said she resumed her position but claimed he tried to touch her again, which was when she realised he was ‘trying to reach for my boob’….When she showed the video to members of staff, she claimed the man tried to deny it and she was told to ‘please calm down, sit down, be quiet’.

@mobilesushibar

The man was like 50-60s and I was so uncomfy @spiritairlines #fyp #foryou #harassmentawareness 😐

♬ original sound – Sushi monster

We don’t have the specific flight details. However video proof shouldn’t be necessary, and certainly allowing the incident to go on for an hour to amass proof shouldn’t be necessary either.

Even if a story of abusive behavior were being made up the passengers should be separated. Flight attendants shouldn’t be in the position of investigating the charges and sorting through conflicting narratives. They should document the incident and help passengers to be separated until people whose job it is to handle adjudication can do so.

In other words the passengers should be separated. Even on a full flight, asking other passengers to switch seems appropriate. Many would gladly do so, even without getting full details of the situation. It’s disturbing that didn’t seem to happen here. There’s much more video and commentary, five more parts on the woman’s TikTok account.

Stories about creeps on planes aren’t new, just as stories about people breaking down or getting high and causing disturbances or dangerous situations. Everyone from various backgrounds is crammed together inside a metal tube at 30,000 feet bad things can happen. It’s rare given the number of passengers and flights, but common enough that we hear about it all the time.

And while it’s usually not enough to say people need to keep themselves under control – often when we’re not dealing with masks, alcohol or drugs it’s things like one person’s “normal” impedes on another person’s “space.” But something as simple and common as one passenger groping another should entail a standard, supportive procedure.

Update: Spirit Airlines tells me,

Spirit Airlines is aware of a video involving claims of a passenger behaving inappropriately on a flight. We are in direct contact with the Guest who posted the video and are actively investigating. Spirit does not tolerate abusive behavior of any kind.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Sick perv, that’s the type of passenger who should go to jail. The flight attendant who did nothing about this situation should be terminated. What the fuck!

  2. I wish I had been on the flight. I may have gone to jail but the jerk would have gone to the hospital!

  3. This is beyond messed up. In my imagination, I would have grabbed his hand and pulled his face into the back of my chair so hard. This 18 year old girl will need therapy now!

  4. AFA flight attendants’ ONLY responsibility these days is to ensure that you’re adhering to the Vegetative Octogenarian’s bullshit mask decree. That’s it.

  5. Airlines are too worried about being politically correct, celebrating “Pride Month,” and “Diversity.” They should stick to the business of transporting passengers SAFELY, which includes calling law enforcement on this scumbag.

  6. Her 15 minutes of fame have come and gone.
    If true she would’ve been howling like a zoo animal. Her dress and appearance scream hoodrat.

  7. If she told me whilst I was on that flight, the matter would have been resolved quickly and justly.

  8. Nothing but trash felons and assorted useless eaters on that airline. Surprised Spirit didn’t assess her a fee…

  9. Looking at this girls other stuff, call me highly skeptical.

    Get up, tell your other family members. Smash the crap out of his hand. But nope, just tiktok it for attention.

  10. Why didn’t she tell her family? The FA wouldn’t have been able to be so dismissive (assuming all posted is accurate).

    @Jaybird: why can’t airlines do both. Sounds like Pride Month and Diversity really bother you since they really aren’t PC. They are respecting human rights and valuing all people equally.

  11. I’m curious, Gary. Really, I am. Did you vet this? Did you get interviews with anyone on the plane? Or the actual woman? Did you find anything in the way of charges pressed or law enforcement involved? Is there anything else besides someone sharing on, of all places, Tik Toc, that this is what happened? I’m “asking for a friend” who is considering a blog which will be nothing but second hand posts of everyone in the world claiming something without actually having to verify it.

    Please tell me you are not so naive as to call yourself a “thought leader” without any sort of investigative research into the incident. Otherwise the thought leader crap is out the window and you are just a sensationalist looking for anything for a few clicks.

  12. @Ray

    Diversity just means less white people. Every race/religion/sex/gender/group on earth is allowed pride except whites/men/Christians. When someone says they support diversity and inclusion, it means they supporting excluding White and Christians and anyone who supports freedom (whether speech/economic/social/association/religious) or family values.

    Regarding this story, who knows except both parties. We have people here in the comments saying they would have assaulted the man if they were on the plane. What evidence do we have beyond a tiktok video? Anyone can make up anything. The danger of the current legal system is anyone can make an accusation and cause harm to a person and many part of that system automatically belief certain groups over others. In this case we have a woman being believed just because she is a woman. In other cases we have blacks being believed just because they are blacks (despite blacks committing violence and property crimes at the highest rate of any race in the world). We have people who automatically side with cops just because they are cops (illogically, some of these people say they are conservative and don’t trust the government. Guess who are agents of the government we aren’t supposed to trust and which is evil: cops). There are creeps who exist. Morality is out the window in 2021. However, that’s no excuse to throw the presumption of innocence out the window.

    Cameras in the passenger cabin may me something to explore. There are serious privacy issues with it but we have a lot of cases like this where someone makes and accusation. We have cases of flight attendants fabricating/instigating/escalating a situation where the flight attendants abuse their authority over aircraft safety to excuse their poor performance. Flight attendants may act better if they know they are going to be held accountable.

  13. @Jackson Waterson: you never do step out of that privileged white brain of yours, do you?

    Diversity: the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.

    So in truth, it really means to stop making it “ White and Christians and anyone who supports freedom ” (yes your dog whistle to your extremist brothers) only. Not your definition. But I am sure your interpretation sounds better to you. It isn’t as though anyone reading this blog site doesn’t know what you are about.

  14. I have a hard time getting my head around the story. Why would a woman just sit there, then whine to a flight attendant? I guess shooting a video to be later published and will make you famous is the first priority. Fingers coming at you between the seats? Scream. Scream loudly. Scream every time he touches you. No matter how dense the crew is, they’ll have to do SOMETHING. And if they don’t act promptly, other pax will help.

  15. @Jackson Waterson
    You could do yourself a favor by moving to Europe where your white ancestors came from and live happily ever after. I’m sure they would be happy to see you. That way you would see less color bothering your ignorant brain.

  16. @Rog: I think that is the equivalent to saying “go back where you came from”. So if I am being fair, I guess we shouldn’t say that to a white either. But, we don’t want him here in Europe, thank you very much. He has been trained and educated in states so he should stay.

Comments are closed.