In Sharing her Story, a Flight Attendant Assaulted by a Pilot Hopes to Help Other FAs
Erica was drugged and sexually assaulted by a colleague, and knows she's not alone: 'It’s my duty to come forward'
April is Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month and this Wednesday, April 26, is Denim Day, an annual, national day of awareness encouraging people to wear denim as a symbol of believing survivors and asserting that consent has nothing to do with your clothing.
The Landing is honored to provide a safe space for Erica, a flight attendant with 16 years on the job, to tell her story publicly for the first time. She hopes that sharing her knowledge about the unique safety issues within the airline industry will help others stay vigilant.
A Typical Layover…Until it Isn’t
Erica, a flight attendant with about two years under her belt with a major U.S. airline at the time, is checking into her hotel with the crew after touching down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
It’s too late for a big night out, but it’s decided there will be the customary wind-down.
“The routine was, Ya’ll going to come down and have a drink? Sure,” Erica recalled in an exclusive interview with me. “We all go upstairs to our assigned rooms, change out of our uniforms, and meet in the bar.
“It wasn’t busy. I was with the captain and two other flight attendants sitting at a table, and then the first officer came down a little later.
“The first officer was just quiet, unassuming, didn’t say much, and he seemed harmless,” Erica explains of the night her life changed irrevocably.
Before long, the captain called it a night and headed up to his room. The other two flight attendants retired to their rooms soon after, leaving Erica and the first officer the last crewmembers downstairs.
“I still had my beer, he had his drink. The bar was closing, so he says, I’m going to move to the lobby and finish my drink, and I agreed to join him to finish mine,” she says. “I don’t remember much of what we talked about…I think he invited me to hang out if I was ever in base* and had extra time. I remember casual conversation.
“We exchanged numbers. I’m new at the airline, he’s being nice. It wasn’t anything romantic. I wasn’t attracted to him. I was sad about a recent breakup, thinking about that, and I was just going through the motions.”
Erica explains this kind of camaraderie is typical in her industry. People will offer to show colleagues around a new city when they’re on call in their crashpads, for example, and Erica’s made a bunch of friends that way over the years.
After a bit of chit-chat with the F.O., she made a trip to the restroom.
“We’re in the lobby, I’m going to the restroom, I leave my bottle of beer there, then come back,” Erica says.
Everything was normal. And then, suddenly, it wasn’t. Erica’s memory of almost everything that came after her trip to the bathroom was inexplicably erased.
“The last thing I remember is the color of the carpet in the lobby,” she says.
What color was it? I ask.
She’s never been able to shake the mental image of that floor, though she’s tried to fact-check herself, studied the hotel website, learned there had been a renovation and a sale of the property since she was there, wondered if she’d recalled the carpet’s design wrong.
Doesn’t matter; the colors that live inside her head have always been the same, stamped on her memory for over a decade, and therefore they are real.
“I remember blues and yellows and maybe a little green,” she says.
Pause for a very clear trigger warning. If you’re not up to bearing witness to a harrowing assault as told by the victim, skip the next section and go straight to Erica’s thoughts on how to make the industry safer.
If you are feeling vulnerable or are in crisis, in the U.S. you can contact RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) for 24/7 confidential support at 1-800-656-4673. RAINN “carries out programs to prevent sexual violence, help survivors, and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice.” The #HEALTogether hashtag is part of April’s movement and “encourages the survivor community and their loved ones to come together in their healing from sexual violence and the dangers online.”
If you’d like to speak with me confidentially on or off the record, inquire about the flight attendant docuseries, or simply to talk, share or vent, you can contact me anytime at MeTooAirlines at Proton.me.
The Next Thing she Remembers
As elusive as that night’s events are to Erica, the details of the dawn stick like a stain she can’t ever remove.
“The next morning, I’m in a room on my back in a bed, and my head is turned to the right and I’m looking at the wall.”
She remembers colors again. “There was that early morning bluish color that comes in through the window, and I was just like, Where am I?”
“I felt him on top of me trying to penetrate me and I turned my head to face him, and I’m just in a stupor. I don’t know where I’m at, what’s happening. I’m completely naked, he’s completely naked,” she says.
The most vulnerable position a person can be in, unclothed and crushed under a virtual stranger. How can she reason? How can she flip through the safest course of action in her mind mid-assault, and then execute it? This claustrophobic attack is a horror movie, but it’s not pretend, it’s not made up for jump scares. It’s a reality Erica still lives with.
“I start with my hands, trying to push him away, and I remember he was really soft so he couldn’t,” she remembers. “I said No, stop, I don’t want to. He said, That’s not what you said last night.”
Now he’s assaulted her with words, with an impossible lie and a claim she can’t rebut because there’s a black hole where her memories should be. But Erica knows herself. This isn’t her. She was not attracted to this guy in the least, and she was still heartbroken from a recent breakup.
“I’m thinking, What? I don’t even remember last night. This is not something I do. I was mortified, I was still in love with my ex, I didn’t want this.
“That’s when he stopped and went to the other bed. There were two beds in the room. Everything after that is a blur. I didn’t know where my clothes were, I couldn’t see because I didn’t have my glasses, I didn’t know where my room was in relation to where I was. I didn’t know where I was. All I knew was I somewhere I didn’t want to be.
“I went into survival mode. I stayed in there for a while trying not to freak out, not get him upset with me, to where he gets angry. I don’t remember going to my room, but I know I did. I found my room, changed into my uniform, made it to lobby on time. I remember seeing my bed still made, never touched. I never made it there to sleep in it. I don’t even remember if I had time to shower. I knew I had to make it to work on time.
“What did he do to me that night? What did it look like when he took me to his room? Did he carry me? Did I stumble there with him holding me up? What was he thinking when he undressed me? And why would he do this if I wasn’t even conscious?
“I remember being asked later, Did you have any indication if you were hurt anywhere? I don’t remember. I was on autopilot. I remember getting in the van to go to the airport, the ladies were asking how the rest of the evening was, I remember saying Oh, it was fine.
“I remember feeling guilty,” Erica adds, which is not an unusual reaction from sexual assault victims. It is an internalized reflex for women in this society, wherein any sexual contact is somehow our fault even if we know intellectually that it isn’t.
“I’m thinking, what if my ex and I got back together and he found out I was with somebody else, even it wasn’t my fault? I never told him what happened. I didn’t tell anybody about it.
“I didn’t think that would ever happen to me, and in my head I was now labeled. I now belonged to this group. I didn’t want to accept it.”
She simply wasn’t ready or able to process the trauma at the time it happened, which was around 2008.**
“That was it. I put it away. I didn’t think about it,” she says. “I didn’t know I was capable of continuing on and burying something so painful so deep. But it was now rooted. It would stay dormant for eight years.”
Processing, Accepting, Healing
The aftermath was not an easy time for her; there are challenges in her personal life, she’s hit with a deep depression, and a part of her is permanently braced for the day she could be scheduled to fly again with her assailant. (Thankfully, she hasn’t been—so far).
And then, one day, the dam burst. One trigger and the pent-up trauma came flooding out.
“The Chanel Miller case was in the news,” Erica explains. “I saw it on the airport TV, and then it was everywhere, and it made me so angry. I was enraged. And I thought, Where is this coming from? I knew I had to face it. I need to be OK with this, I need to work through this, not just mask it and put a Band-Aid on the emotions.”
It’s not surprising the case hit her hard. In 2015, college student and rapist Brock Turner raped Chanel Miller by a dumpster while she was unconscious. Miller was then violated again by the judge on the rapist’s trial. Turner, a rapist, could’ve received a maximum of 14 years in prison, but the judge sentenced Brock Turner, who is a rapist, to six months. He served three. (Miller’s website for her searingly honest memoir, Know My Name, offers a long list of useful resources for victims).
That case kickstarted a reckoning for Erica, and her official turning point soon followed. She was down in Fort Lauderdale again, out and about with friends who also worked at the airline, when she got that not-a-beer-buzz feeling after having a couple of drinks.
She ended up telling a friend and fellow FA she thought her drink had been drugged this weekend—again. And then, in one cathartic revelation, she told the friend what the first officer did to her. (Though Erica doesn’t know exactly what happened on that layover before she came to in the morning, she believes it’s clear the first officer drugged her drink, and has strong suspicions about the extent of his sexual assault on her).
“I told her that the guy is unassuming and quiet, and if you ever find yourself flying or overnighting with him, be careful and watch your drinks,” Erica says. “I was sick of seeing predators getting away with it. I wished I’d spoken up sooner.”
Erica was angry—and ready to act. “I was dealing with what happened to me the best I could, but when I kept hearing it’s still happening to other people I work with, it just intensified the anger.”
As readers of The Landing know all too well, predators always have other victims. The late American Airlines first officer Sten Molin had a double or even triple life and raped, assaulted, harassed and stalked dozens of women and underage girls, many of them flight attendants (I believe the number could have been close to 100, and would have been many more had Molin not died on flight 587 at age 34).
Retired Southwest Airlines Captain Michael Haak has at least one conviction and multiple allegations of sexual assault, harassment and stalking against him including those detailed in a lawsuit from Southwest pilot Christine Janning. To name just two. (Attorney Jeanne Christensen, who I interviewed last year, had an insightful explanation for how and why these predators are so prolific).
“This was all before Cosby and Weinstein and MeToo,” Erica recalls. “How many times do you allow this to happen? It’s something that’s been going on for so long. So I decided I have a responsibility. It’s now my duty. I have to say something. You know how they say if you see something, say something? I know something, so I have to speak. My silence could be hurting someone else.
“I didn’t have a voice that I was confident in using. I was comfortable being unseen. But that level of comfort was now becoming uncomfortable. The weight of the responsibility I was feeling had begun to outweigh my fears.
“I used to hold onto that guilt. If I had said something sooner, maybe…” Erica trails off, then says, “but I know it’s not my fault. It’s his fault. It’s the predator’s fault.”
Damn right.
Erica Speaks Out
Eventually, Erica was in touch with HR about what happened to her. She received one phone call from the airline to discuss it, in which the caller proffered old chestnuts like What were you wearing, how much did you have to drink, who paid for the drinks?
“I told her, I really don’t remember how much I had to drink, a couple of beers, bottled Miller Lite or Michelob Ultra. That’s what I drank at the time,” Erica recalls. “What were you wearing? I said, I don’t remember. My typical overnight uniform was usually jeans and a T-shirt and flip-flops. What does it matter?
We were trying to figure out what time of year it was.
I said, We were in Florida. It’s always warm. What does it matter?
Her story is a gold-standard case study for why we don’t ask women stupid questions about the choices they make around the time of their assaults. What would you ask Erica to try and lay blame on her or make sense of what happened?
Don’t have one light beer, maybe two, when you’re well into your twenties and you know your alcohol tolerance perfectly well? Don’t sit in a well-lit public lobby with the pilot you spent the entire day working with? Don’t exist. Don’t live.
Erica told me the same thing I hear from most women in the commercial airline industry—she loves her job and her career. She’s earned seniority at her airline, and she shouldn’t have to start at the bottom elsewhere (not that it’s even easy to get those jobs) because another employee attacked her.
Erica wants things to get better for everyone. She wants a safer working environment for all, and like other victims I’ve spoken to at the airlines, she was surprised at the lack of a system to handle the reporting and aftermath of sexual assault or harassment in the workplace. She says she was told there was no mechanism to ensure she’d never have to fly/work with her alleged*** assailant again, which piled stress upon stress.
“I would go to work, anxious, thinking I need to get to the gate early to see who’s flying up front,” she says. “It was nervewracking.”
Erica’s Guide for Staying Vigilant
“This is my story,” she says. “I’m telling people what happened to me. I tell any flight attendant who will listen, new hires, anyone, about the good and bad of working at the airline. I tell them, if you want to hear it, this is what happened to me.
“The last woman I told still has that same enthusiasm I had when I started. She was asking me and another flight attendant, This job is so fun! What kind of suggestions do you guys have?
“The guy I’m flying with is giving advice like, This is how I pack my food bag. I was watching and continuing to work, and I let that be their thing, and then, when she and I were alone I said, Here’s the thing…
Not everyone’s your friend: “You’re kind of on your own out there,” Erica told her. “It can be a lonely job. Be mindful, watch your drinks, never let it out of your sight, take it with you. If you do leave it, get another one.”
Sharing a truth can be empowering: Erica told the young woman what happened to her, and what it taught her. “She was shocked, but also thankful for the information. I feel like she kept looking at me and watching how I worked after learning what I went through. She called me brave. I didn’t intend to burst her bubble of how great and fun the job is, but I saw myself in her when I had first started.”
“Trust your gut: If something doesn’t look right or feel right, listen to your instincts. On that overnight in Fort Lauderdale, I remember how we were sitting at a table, the whole crew, and the first officer was just quiet, he was unassuming, didn’t say much, so you think he’s harmless. But the way he would just look at everyone, at me, there was something there I noticed, but I didn’t think much of it.”
Be OK with turning people down. “Maybe I shouldn’t have stayed and had a drink in the lobby with him. It’s OK to say, No, thanks, I’m going to bed.”
Look out for each other. “I strongly suggest never leaving anyone behind. It’s not right. People die on overnights and people get assaulted on their overnights,” Erica says. “I’ve heard of people who’ve slipped and fallen and hit their head or had a heart attack. I’ve almost slipped and fallen in the bathroom and I thought, that could’ve been bad. I’ve had people leave me at the hotel and head to the airport to start the day. You never leave anyone behind. We’re all we have in this job, so if you can, try to stay together.”
Turn the humiliation around. An FA confided that “a pilot riding in the jump seat on a flight showed her a picture of his junk. It makes me so angry. She looked away. I told her I would grab his phone and say never show this to me again. I’d make a scene, make them embarrassed. You’re not going to [shock] me into silence. I know it’s easy to say when you’re not in it, but the FA said, That’s a good idea, I never thought about that. Girls are just shocked and don’t know what to do in those situations. Why do we have to put up with this stuff?”
Don’t apologize. Erica’s story “is an extreme case of assault. I haven’t even spoken of or reported the countless times where someone’s made an [inappropriate] comment or shown pictures or videos. Why do they think this is OK? I’ve had to tell people before to stop sending me gross DMs: This is inappropriate, I don’t want to see this, I don’t appreciate it. I feel like I have to say something. I don’t say I’m sorry for saying this, because I’m not.
Know it’s not your fault. Since she’s spoken out, Erica says, “people are more than not supportive and receptive.” But not always. “This one guy said making a claim like mine could really ruin this guy’s career. I said, ‘my accusation could ruin his career? No. His behavior could ruin his career.’ It hadn’t yet, but his actions are his responsibility. I told the guy, I’m just saying what [the F.O.] did. So no, my accusation didn’t ruin him. How dare you.”
Don’t neglect basic safety checks on layovers: “I go into my hotel room. I check the closet. I check the curtains. Check under the bed. Is someone waiting in the shower? They tell us to check our rooms for safety reasons,” Erica says. “I’ve seen some cases on TV where an employee of the hotel was in the room. Always deadbolt the doors. Some people I know put the ironing board in front of the door.” In Erica’s case, she says she became obsessively concerned the F.O. would be the one hiding, though she says it’s getting better. “I’d get to my room and think, Could he be here?”
A tip for friends and family wanting to help: “People sometimes respond with, I don’t know what to say. What can I do to help?” Erica explains. “If this has never happened to you, I don’t expect you to fix anything or even say anything. Just being there to listen helps. You can support a friend who has been through it just by listening.”
Erica, as readers of The Landing know, is far from alone in this industry. There is a rot that comes from the top down, and I’m still floored by some of the things I hear from those in power.
But she’s not about to let a flawed system force her out of her beloved career in the sky.
“There is a blank space in my memory, but I know I was sexually assaulted,” Erica says. “Thank god I don’t have any memory of that night, but the memories I do have about the next morning still haunt me.
“You know what? I’m still here. I’m still doing my job. It is a great job for me. It’s been a blessing in my life, and it’s also been a curse. Life gets tough, and the assault put me in a really really dark place, but I’m still here.”
*For those not in the business, “base” is where crew is—unsurprisingly—based for an airline, and that location might be a different city or state than where they live. That means some crewmembers will commute and stay in crash pads in base while waiting to begin their workdays.
**Why didn’t Erica speak up sooner? Why didn’t she tell someone? Delays in reporting are not uncommon for sexual assault victims. As I was working on this piece, news broke about a woman suing for rape under this amazing New York law—it’s temporary, so please jump on it if you qualify! She was allegedly assaulted by a Harvey Weinstein associate at age 19 in New York 22 years ago, in 2001.
***Erica did not reveal to me the name or any personal details about her alleged assailant. Furthermore, consider this “alleged” to be a blanket “alleged” for Erica’s story about what she says he did to her.
Erica thanks for sharing your story. It’s very helpful and you saved people from being a victim. If we stand together we can win this battle.