Airlines finally get their #MeToo moment
Perhaps the biggest disincentive for airlines to keep tabs of how attendants — or passengers — are sexually harassed or assaulted is that they don’t have to
Dallas — From Southwest’s “hostesses” in the 1970s to Hooters Air to the Vietnamese budget carrier whose flight attendants were made to wear bikinis, airlines have a long history of sexualising the role of flight attendants. Their victimisation continues to this day. More than a third of flight attendants say they have experienced sexual harassment over the past year, with almost one in five suffering physical assaults such as touching or groping, according to a 2018 survey of 3,500 attendants by the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) union. Last year, the #MeToo movement’s exposure of ghastly workplace behaviour finally reached the airlines. As part of legislation funding the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), US Congress formed a task force aimed at addressing sexual misconduct up in the sky. Its goal was to review airline training and incident reporting so as to better protect employees and passengers. “It needs to be that we have a zero-tolerance policy,” says Lyn Mon...
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