Several years ago, when she was traveling as a passenger on a flight, Sara Nelson woke up to an assault: Her inebriated seatmate, a man she didn’t know, was groping her breasts and her crotch.
As a trained flight attendant, Nelson thought she would know what to do. But she found herself frozen, scared to call for help and risk potentially escalating the attack or — worse — that she wouldn’t be believed.
“It was confusing and mortifying,” said Nelson, now the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, a union representing 50,000 workers. “From a personal experience, I can understand what it’s like for a victim to go through all of that and wonder if you should report it, or if someone will believe you and care.”
One in five flight attendants has witnessed a passenger being assaulted or had an assault reported to them, according to a 2017 survey of nearly 2,000 flight attendants. However, the vast majority of flight attendants have no specific training regarding sexual assault, the survey found. The issue has been brought into focus by #MeToo[1], the movement highlighting women’s experiences with sexual assault and harassment across different industries.
In addition to passengers’ own stories[2] about sexual assault on planes, most flight attendants say they’ve been harassed on the job, a May 2018 survey by AFA found[3]. “Now, there is political and societal momentum to take this seriously,” Nelson said. “The men — and it’s mostly men — who run the airline industry would be shocked to know what is happening on their planes.” ...