Airline Accused of Ignoring Sexual Harassment of Passenger

Mark Zuckerberg's sister says she was 'disgusted and degraded'
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 1, 2017 2:00 PM CST
Zuckerberg's Sister Says She Was Harassed on Flight
Alaska Airlines says it's investigating a claim that flight attendants allowed a passenger to sexually harass Randi Zuckerberg on a flight.   (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP, File)

Randi Zuckerberg, CEO of Zuckerberg Media and sister of Mark, was flying from Los Angeles to Mexico recently when she says the man seated next to her started rating the bodies of female passengers, talking to her about touching himself, and telling her "Millennial women just aren't willing to give some booty to get a job anymore," CNN reports. According to NBC News, Zuckerberg says the man continued to make "explicit, lewd, and highly offensive" remarks to her for the rest of the Alaska Airlines flight. But when she complained to flight attendants, she says they "told me he was a frequent flier, brushed off his behavior, and kept giving him drinks." Zuckerberg says the best flight attendants could offer was to move her out of first class to a seat at the back of the plane.

Zuckerberg says the whole experience left her feeling "disgusted and degraded," Bloomberg reports. And while Alaska Airlines has "launched a thorough investigation" into the male passenger and suspended his travel privileges, experts say this is far from an isolated incident. Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA union, says sexual misconduct during flights is a "silent epidemic." Last year, a union survey found 20% of crew members had been contacted by a passenger reporting sexual assault. But law enforcement was called or met the flight upon landing in fewer than half of those incidents. "It is a critical time for the airline industry to examine the steps necessary to take this on," Nelson says. (More Randi Zuckerberg stories.)

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