With the FBI investigating more midair sexual assaults than ever before, it's clear the airline industry must take steps to better protect passengers.
According to CNN, the FBI has opened 63 investigations into sexual assault on aircraft during the current fiscal year, compared with just 38 as recently as 2014. What's more, those figures don't include incidents that aren't reported to the FBI or at all.
Several women detailed their disturbing experiences aboard commercial flights to CNN, including Katie Campos, who claims she was repeatedly groped by a man on a United Airlines flight from Newark to Buffalo last week.
"I felt like no one, no one that was supposed to be in charge could handle the situation," she said. "I kept on feeling, and I continue now as I'm like filing these reports, to feel like I'm the one who is doing something wrong, and I'm not being protected."
"This man should have been restrained so he couldn't continue to do this. And just continuing to touch and stare just made me feel completely helpless and horrible. It was terrifying."
In that particular incident, the man was escorted off the plane by police and charged with disorderly conduct.
Allison Dvaladze described a similar experience aboard a Delta Air Lines flight from Seattle to Amsterdam in April 2016. "I felt a hand in my crotch, and realized that the man next to me was holding, was grabbing my crotch," she told CNN. "I slapped his hand right away, yelled 'no,' without even thinking."
Dvaladze said she alerted the flight crew but received little support. "I believe they were doing everything they could, in their mind, to comfort me, but it was clear there was not a clear procedure for what they should do. They asked me what I wanted them to do, and at that moment I really just couldn't think about anything except for wanting to get off the plane."
A Delta representative apologized for the incident and the airline offered her 10,000 frequent flyer miles as a result.
"If somebody reports a crime to an airline, it should be flagged," Dvaladze told CNN. "It should not be treated as if it's lost luggage."
Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) union, believes sexual harassment and assault training should be a higher priority for carriers.
"In my 22 years as a flight attendant, I have never taken part in a conversation-in training or otherwise-about how to handle sexual harassment or sexual assault," Nelson told CNN. "Not only are we not equipped with good, clear policies about how to do that and training about how to do that, you're asking people who are experiencing sexual harassment every single day to now be the enforcers and it just doesn't make a lot of sense."
An AFA survey of 2,000 flight attendants found that roughly 20 percent had received a report of passenger on passenger sexual assault during a flight. Nonetheless, law enforcement was contacted or met the plane less than half of the time.
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Last month, Alaska Airlines launched an investigation into a sexual harassment complaint made by former Facebook executive Randi Zuckerberg. Similarly disturbing incidents have involved American Airlines, Delta, Southwest Airlines and United.
Earlier this year, Air India went so far as to introduce female-only seating areas for women flying alone on the heels of multiple in-flight sexual assault allegations.
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