Southwest tells her to just switch seats and then offers her a free dinner for enduring the sexual harassment for five hours.
.@southwestair allows man to keep watching porn & masturbate during flight while terrified woman begs for help on Twitter. @Delta @United @JetBlue @AmericanAir @FlyFrontier what are your policies? How do you deal with this? Share on XOn May 29th, a woman paid for Internet during her flight in order to reach out to Southwest Airlines for help. (This was reported on by Fox News here) She reported to them on Twitter that the man seated next to her was watching pornography and masturbating. After he grabbed her arm, she didn’t feel safe or like she could get up to ask the crew directly for help. So, she took to Twitter asking corporate headquarters to reach out to the crew. This was a five hour flight, all the while, Southwest was responding to her via Twitter telling her to just talk to the crew after the flight or to just switch seats next time.
View original Twitter thread here.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation has worked on raising these concerns with U.S. commercial airlines for years. See this article from December 2017.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation has been in communication with executives from Delta since January and they claim to be improving their policies and training. However, in a recent flight, our Executive Director, Dawn Hawkins spoke with 4 female flight attendants about their experience with passengers viewing pornography during flights. All explained that they had encountered men viewing porn during flights and that it created very uncomfortable work environments for them and they didn’t feel empowered to improve the situation.
This is an ongoing problem with airlines and it is time for them to implement solutions. Passengers should have the right to be free from sexual exploitation while being virtually trapped in a confined space on these flights. We call on all U.S. commercial airlines to 1) update their policies regarding pornography and sex acts during flights and 2) implement brand-wide trainings for all of flight crews on how to intervene if a passenger begins watching pornography or engaging in sexual acts on a plane.
TWITTER ACTION: DEMAND SOUTHWEST & OTHER AIRLINES EVALUATE THEIR POLICIES AND TRAININGS
Why did you, @SouthwestAir, not do more to stop the harassment of your passenger on a flight while a man watched porn & masturbated? We should feel safe on your flights. What is your policy on porn-watching during flights? Are your… Share on X
What are your policies regarding pornography viewing on your flights? @SouthwestAir @Delta @United @JetBlue @AmericanAir @FlyFrontier Reports of men viewing porn and masturbating surface regularly. How are you dealing with this? Share on X
Take action and email major airlines to improve their training for aircrews!
