Woman sues American Airways over incident with seatmate under the influence of alcohol

Gretchen Stelter, on her way home from a guided food-tour in Mexico with her friends, sat down at her window seat in the function class on American Airways and began editing a compilation manuscript for her new work.

Worried about the fast-approaching cut-off date, Scribbler, 42, said she was hoping the computer she was watching and the AirPods in her ears would dissuade the chatty passenger closest to her. When his plan failed, Stelter said, he “quit” working and made small talk with the man during the two-hour flight from Dallas-Castle Maine to Chicago.

However, in view of Stelter’s pending lawsuit, American Airways employees failed to provide her with protection from the near-miss incident: Her seatmate, who had ordered two double vodka sodas, was “uncontrollably intoxicated and loud. sexually assaulted her.” The complaint alleges that he also grabbed her buttocks when she moved to switch seats with a sympathetic passenger.

Stelter’s lawsuit, filed in Reddy Dinner County in late May, also alleges that American Airlines employees “shamed and guilt-tripped” her in the hours and days following the October 29 incident.

A spokesperson for the Castle Importance-based provider declined to comment Friday, citing the pending litigation.

The swimsuit is real in the layout of the new group of family complications for the airline.

The federal government said a former American Airlines flight attendant last September tried to get a 14-year-old girl to complain that she went to the restroom and that he owned recordings of four different minors. The family of a prominent woman has sued the airline. The man pleaded not guilty last week to attempted sexual exploitation of children and possession of child pornography.

Additionally, last week, three DIM men sued the provider, alleging discriminatory behavior after they and other DIM passengers were immediately removed from a January flight over complaints of “offensive body odor.” In a letter to his employees on June 18, American Airways CEO Robert Isom called the incident “unacceptable” and promised to take several steps to increase diversity and inclusion. Isom said he has also spoken with NAACP leaders, who threatened to issue a PASS advisory against the provider.

In the Tribune interview, Stelter said she had a long time playing nine days of fun with several girlfriends in Mexico on October 29. Traveling isolated, he began his advance into Oaxaca at 6 a.m.; Her itinerary included stops of importance in Mexico Town and Dallas-Castle, from where she boarded American flight 1551 for O’Hare.

She planned to press on from Chicago to the home she shared with her husband in Madison, Wisconsin.

Stelter said she “spent” on a business-class seat so she could have an extra box to take a romantic lie layout from a manuscript she was editing for her new work at the Naperville-based publishing house. She said the person closest to her in 3B – an aisle seat – ordered a double vodka soda and struck up a conversation.

“It became clear immediately that he wanted to negotiate,” she said. “He just kept talking.”

Stelter said the conversation spontaneously began with a conversation about his life, his travels, or even the writings of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Her seatmate was the first to speak coherently, Stelter said.

About a month after the flight, the man ordered his drink refilled to match the swimsuit. Stelter, who had finished his soft drink, decided to make an alcoholic drink as well, he said.

“He was not abusive, and he did not start behaving inappropriately,” she said. “It certainly escalated when he was served alcohol.”

Stelter said she became more uncomfortable as he complimented her looks, complained about his girlfriend and said he wanted her to be more like him. Stelter, who was wearing her wedding ring, said she politely rebuffed him, and told the man she was “happily married.”

He called himself an “idiot” and told himself to “shut up,” but persisted anyway, the lawsuit said.

The complaint alleges that when the man made “derogatory, insulting and harassing comments” to Stelter, she said he was going to have sex with her, using foul language, and said he would do so. Will, two flight attendants were within reach. “wear him down” and “f—–” him.)

Stelter said he constantly told her “no” and told her to resist talking and to resist eating.

“To be honest, I was stuck,” she told the Tribune. “I was in 3A. He was in 3B. My only way out of that seat was to either get some kind of help or climb on top of him, giving him full access to parts of my body that I didn’t feel like giving him access to.

Other passengers took notice, including a man sitting in front of Stelter in 2A, who called a flight attendant and asked if Stelter was OK and she told him she was not, according to the lawsuit. His seatmate told the employee he was just “having fun”, and Stelter said the flying carer “took no action to protect” him.

“He walked away, allowing the attacker to place the remaining wine in his glass as well as the vodka bottle on his tray table,” the complaint said.

Stelter said the man’s harassing conduct continued throughout the flight. He instructed her that they were “going to party”, repeatedly touched her hair, and attempted to grab her hand and kiss her, according to the lawsuit, and began spitting on the floor.

Stelter’s complaint alleges that two flight attendants in the airplane’s business-class class witnessed the man’s conduct and did not support him despite his court cases that he was groping and touching her and that Was doing this. To be unwell. The lawsuit admits they warned the man against touching alternative passengers; Stelter also discussed in an interview that he gave them H2O and brought backup to the toilet.

Feeling trapped, Stelter said she attempted to defuse the situation by responding mildly but firmly to the man, taking advantage of her training from running section events with the Rape Extreme Center.

“I think I was a little shocked that no one was helping me,” she said. “I wanted to curl up like a ball and be as small as possible because I didn’t want to be touched anymore.”

Shortly before landing, the male passengers in 2A were introduced to industrial seats. The lawsuit alleges that Stelter’s “attacker” grabbed her buttocks as she climbed on top of him to defuse the altercation, with 2 flight attendants standing within reach that day. She said he continued to verbally harass her while in the gap between the seats.

Upon landing at O’Hare, the lawsuit says, passengers were asked to remain seated as police removed the man from the plane after they determined he was “too intoxicated to safely leave.” Stelter said that after this the team of doctors took him out of the airport on a stretcher.

The lawsuit alleges that airline gate agents “punished and blamed” Stelter during conversations immediately after the flight and told her she had done little to protest their conduct. She lodged an online complaint on the website of Nearest Age American. Four days after her flight, she received “a form email in response,” the lawsuit says. At his request, a buyer member of the family called him.

“After explaining that she had alerted the American flight attendants to the attacker’s behavior and they took no action in response, the American customer relations employee yelled at and blamed (Stelter) for the incident, causing (her) Tears welled up,” the lawsuit alleges.

A few days later, Stelter said, a member of the airline’s government staff called and said the former employee had not treated the situation properly and promised to get in touch with anyone with their international investigative staff. He said it never happened.

Stelter said he has been in contact with the FBI and has signed a complaint against the intoxicated passenger. His attorneys, Deanna Pihos and Benjamin Bluestein, said they were unaware of whether he was dealing with jail fees or civil penalties. His name is not in the lawsuit.

Federal Gliding Management reported a marked increase in passenger unruliness in 2021, thanks to a zero-tolerance policy that replaced threat letters with financial fines. According to the FAA, there were 5,973 unruly passenger incidents that year. As of June 9, the number of incidents has dropped to 2,455 in 2022, 2,075 in 2023 and 915 in 2024, of which 106 incidents were related to alcohol consumption.

Last week, the FAA filed a federal lawsuit to recover nearly $82,000 in fines from a San Antonio girl who attempted to open an American Airlines cabin door mid-flight in July 2021 and was ultimately restrained with duct tape. Was banned.

In January, an American Airways passenger flying from Dallas-Castle Importance was accused of assaulting a flight attendant and then kicking a police officer. And in March, an intoxicated passenger on an American Airways flight to Tampa was released after he was accused of threatening to “take this plane down.”

Once an avid traveler who said she had lived in Australia, been stuck in Paris and visited far-flung places like London, Fiji, Ireland, New Zealand and Italy, Stelter said the ordeal had helped her Most have been left on the ground. Anxiety, panic attacks and alternating emotional distress.

According to her lawsuit, she authorized a voluntary demotion at her full-time job and was no longer able to fill her shifts as a part-time on-call consultant for rape victims.

“That’s one of the hardest things about trauma,” she told the Tribune, “when it takes away from you the thing you love.”

Stelter said she is suing for damages, lost profits and to send a message to American Airlines about improving its employee training to better handle in-flight incidents and passenger court cases. Have been.

“Instead of listening to and supporting me every step of the way, I suffered trauma,” she said. “There was this complete failure at every turn to do anything to protect me or validate me. If someone at some point said, ‘I’m so sorry this happened to you,’ and then they handled it the same way, it would be a very different situation.

cmgutowski@chicagotribune.com