EXCLUSIVE: Is American Airlines Probing Decades of Alleged Rapes and Assaults by Its Employees?
‘He said he was gonna rape himself a flight attendant:’ Reports of assault by male flight crew date back to the 1970s
Part I of an occasional series. TW: Descriptions of sexual assault.
American Airlines is gathering information involving historical reports of harassment, rape, sexual assault, bullying and/or retaliation by employees including male pilots, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation say.
The scope of the investigation around past alleged victims and what its goals are remain unconfirmed. American did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
Current and past American Airlines employees who say they were assaulted by their own co-workers claim their experiences were an open secret in some corners.
Dozens of victims — most of them female flight attendants reporting assaults by male pilots — have been knocking on doors for years seeking to be heard, recognized, believed and supported.
Victims I spoke to who reported their attacks to American over the past decades say the company didn’t support them, that alleged assailants were protected and continued to fly and even be promoted in some cases, and that the administration used intimidation and scare tactics to silence the victims.
Many of them have wondered aloud why the #MeToo train passed by the Fort Worth, Texas station.
Until now.
Staggering Numbers
I have spent five months bearing witness to raw, wrenching accounts of horrific attacks on women* working for American Airlines. Brave and eloquent, the women have reached out week after week through social media and email.
They have shared detailed and harrowing experiences of rape, sexual assault, harassment, bullying and retaliation. Between them they named a half-dozen alleged perpetrators, some of whom still work for American. In all, 30 people contacted me** about experiencing or witnessing this treatment in the workplace since the mid-1990s.
Thirty people.
Still others have spoken up online, in social media groups including Facebook’s The #MeToo Truth About American Airlines, in affidavits, and in their own lawsuits against American, one of which is scheduled to go to trial in April.
Men working for the airline assaulted or harassed women in various locations: onboard, at bars during layovers, in hotel rooms, and even in the victims’ own homes after they accepted car rides from the airport by a male pilot after their shifts.
Some women were teenagers starting their careers at the time of their assaults by pilots, some of whom were married men in their thirties, forties, and older.
The victims describe a cover-up culture where those who dare speak out are treated to retaliation, blackballing and hostility.
One young flight attendant (FA) who was raped by a 33-year-old pilot in her hotel room on an overseas layover around the year 2000 was told by American to contact the police. The police back on U.S. soil said the assault was out of their jurisdiction and told her to go to that country’s consulate. No one would help her.
To her knowledge, the man was not investigated or questioned by American. He continued flying and went on to rape more flight attendants.
As several FAs pointed out to me, who do you report an assault to if you are a 19-year-old American in Brazil or London, leaving within a day or two, carrying limited cash, and you don’t know your way around let alone how to get to the appropriate authorities, and your ride home is the guy who assaulted you?
I didn’t hear from a single victim who said she found justice or felt the company encouraged her to pursue her claims. Several felt they had no choice but to fly again with their assailants rather than protest the schedule she was put on and be viewed as a troublemaker.
One rape is too many. One assault is unacceptable.
This is too many. This is an abomination.
What did American Airlines know, and when did they know it?
Kimberly’s Story
In 2018, veteran flight attendant Kimberly Goesling embarked on a work trip to Germany for American, which had hired “celebrity” chef Mark Sargeant to create a menu for their international first class service.
One night, upper management enjoyed a heavy drinking session with Sargeant and egged him on to go after Goesling, according to a lawsuit she filed.
In the midst of this, an American Airlines manager gave Goesling’s room number to Sargeant.
It was after three in the morning when the chef barged into her room, grabbed her in a choke-hold, and sexually assaulted her.
Sargeant admitted the following day that he had attacked her, and would later say the same to the company, according to the suit.
Goesling reported the assault to American. With 30 years of exceptional service resulting in glowing reviews from management under her belt, she hoped they’d have her back.
The first question she was asked: What were you wearing?
She replied she was wearing pajamas.
That’s when the retaliation began, she says. She hired a lawyer and filed suit in 2020. During a deposition, she cried as American Airlines lawyers asked her humiliating and degrading questions.
She wrote in her public resignation letter to the airline, “…at my deposition, your airlines’ own lawyer asked what finger my attacker used in violating me and how far he inserted it. She asked me this multiple times.”
Lawyers for the airline dug into all aspects of her life, even deposing her ex-boyfriend and calling her gynecologist.
In May of 2021, Goesling’s team submitted an amended petition against American Airlines and Sargeant; the chef ended up in an out-of-court settlement and later said, “While I do not recognize Ms. Goesling’s version of events, I whole-heartedly apologize for the indignity of my behavior that night.”
(It’s not shocking to me he was a protégé of Gordon Ramsay, considering Ramsay himself mocked and bullied me while I was on the job as a People magazine reporter).
“American is responsible because it hired the predator, it provided the alcohol he drank and then its managers encouraged him to go to Kimberly’s room,” said her attorney Robert Miller of the Dallas-based law firm Miller Bryant LLP.
American says they investigated the assault, cut ties with Sargeant, and deny a manager gave up Goesling’s room number.
The trial begins in April. Hotel rooms around Fort Worth are filling up, flights are booked, and supporters are ready to crowd the courtroom and lend support.
Like many of the women who wrote to me, Goesling wants to help victims who have been through similar trauma, and hopefully help prevent it from happening to others in the future.
“It’s clear to us that American Airlines has a very large problem,” Miller said, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “What they do historically proves that what American Airlines does is when a person complains of sexual assault, they are silenced and threatened with being blackballed.”
Goesling’s supporters are using the hashtags #MeTooAmericanAirlines and #RefusingToBeSilenced.
Mary’s Story
Mary, another former flight attendant for American, came forward to tell Goesling’s lawyers her own story in a sworn affidavit.
Mary revealed that in 1977, the captain on the flight she was working on drugged her drink and raped her on a layover. She didn’t report the attack for fear of retaliation.
“I did not tell American Airlines what (the captain) did to me because I believed that I would not be believed and that I would be fired,” she wrote in the affidavit. “American does not like snitches and I believe I would be blackballed by cockpit crew for reporting one of their own.”
It wasn’t until much later that she flew with the same captain again, at which point she confided in her co-workers in the galley what he did to her. They weren’t surprised, and in fact informed her the pilot was a repeat offender who’d drugged and raped other flight attendants, Mary wrote in the affidavit for Goesling’s attorneys.
Not all Men. Not all Male Pilots. Not all Routes.
Women also wrote to me about the good men they’ve worked with at American. They wrote of pilots who were gentlemen, mentors and allies.
They relayed how they were proud to know and work with these men, that there are plenty who treat women on the ground, in the galley and in the cockpit with professionalism, dignity and kindness.
A common thread the women reported about these men was that they were the best at their jobs, that they’re known to be skilled pilots who take their roles seriously and who don’t use the aircraft as a meat market or target-rich environment, or hotel rooms as scenes of crimes.
Unfortunately, there are still too many bad apples. If 13,000 pilots work for the airline and, for argument’s sake, if 1% of them behave horrendously, even that small slice of the workforce can tear through a population like a missile.
If one man perpetrates dozens of attacks over many years, the number of victims is huge even if the number of attackers isn’t. If 130 men harass, assault, abuse and/or retaliate against women in the workplace over time, the damage becomes exponential and lasts for generations.
Abigail’s Story
Abigail Watson*** was launching her career as a flight attendant in 2001, and everyone in her life thought it was a glamorous, exciting job. So far, it was. She was traveling to exotic locales and getting paid to do it.
On one such trip to a European city, Watson dragged her rollercase over the well-worn carpet of the hotel hallway and looked for her room number.
All she wanted to do was sleep. Time, as flight crew will tell you, is a fluid concept when you travel so often for work. Breakfast at 3 p.m., sleep at 10 a.m., whatever it takes to stay on course, stay alert, say healthy.
She found her room, settled in, and immediately began to think about food and sleep. She checked the room service menu, dreaming of putting on her comfy PJs, when there was a knock at the door.
It was the pilot from that day’s flight.
He cajoled her and pressured her to come out drinking. She said no, I don’t want to go out and party. He grew more forceful and demanding. She said no again.
He pushed his way into her room, and then slammed her up against a wall.
He began groping her, his weight and height far exceeding hers. She couldn’t move. She could barely breath for him pressing into her.
She said No, please, I don’t want this.
He kept going, breathing into her hear and rubbing up against her.
No, no, no. Please.
He threw her on the bed and raped her.
She had the same thoughts running through her head for years afterward.
I said no.
You hurt me anyway.
You wouldn’t stop.
You destroyed my love for flying.
I hate you.
She was nineteen years old.
She never reported it because she believed it would bring nothing but trouble for her. Already, she was being blamed for her own attacks.
She was mocked and slut-shamed by male cockpit crew as rumors swirled that she was “sleeping with” the man who attacked her — and even some of her fellow FAs joined in.
The fear of public shaming and retaliation is one reason many women have not — yet — revealed their identities or those of their attackers.
A few victims cited the constant harassment and death threats toward Christine Blasey Ford, who shared her story of being sexually assaulted by now-Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, as a cautionary tale.
And, of course, there is the uncertainty of how their own company will react.
But backlash also comes from surprising corners.
Not all women get behind their sisters. Some victims have experienced disbelief, slut-shaming and anger from fellow FAs.
One woman wrote to me, “Move on, we have all had encounters with sleazy men and get past it. It is called maturity. I think many women need to grow up and learn to handle the advances of men, and take it as a compliment rather than crying to mommy about every little proposition.”
Even while working on a story peripheral to this one, a woman I’m told works for a commercial airline spent weeks harassing and threatening me on social media and via email.
Her latest is a death threat: “Take down your lies about xxxx or I have a penetrating captive bolt pistol which might meet your head.” I have contacted police, cybercrimes and the airline I’m told she works for. Her airline so far has not responded to my concerns.
The Drug Rape M.O.
Another deterrent to reporting assaults and rapes on layovers, say the women who were assaulted on the job, is the predators’ use of alcohol and drugs to render victims pliant or incapacitated.
They told me about a particular group of pilots who were friends and flew certain routes from the late 1990s onward.
On many layovers, victims and witnesses told me, some male pilots bought the young FAs liquor, pressured them to drink it, dragged them onto dance floors to grind on them, and purposely targeted young, naïve women they perceived as “lower-class” and therefore less likely to resist, report, or be believed, the women say.
The pilots’ victims were co-workers, but also citizens of the foreign countries they flew to, including underage girls, flight attendants say.
There are reports of incapacitated women being physically supported by a man taking them back to their hotel rooms, of women being plied with hard liquor or suspecting they were drugged and waking up with a male co-worker in her bed knowing there was sexual contact but not knowing if she consented.
According to The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, RAINN.org, 1–800–656–4673, 24/7, “Consent cannot be given by individuals who are underage, intoxicated or incapacitated by drugs or alcohol, or asleep or unconscious. If someone agrees to an activity under pressure of intimidation or threat, that isn’t considered consent because it was not given freely. Unequal power dynamics, such as engaging in sexual activity with an employee or student, also mean that consent cannot be freely given.”
Women who didn’t report felt certain the first question they’d be asked if they revealed a suspected assault after a night of partying is, How much did you have to drink?
Afterward, pilots joked about the women’s “morning-after regrets” and bragged about “conquests” who were actually victims. A former FA reported to Kimberly Goesling’s lawyers that an American Airlines pilot on a layover once admitted he overheard a second pilot planning an attack.
“He said on the first day he was gonna rape himself a flight attendant,” the affidavit quotes the first pilot as saying. The second pilot did, in fact, attempt to rape an FA.
Part of the pressure to be out and drink and party, the FAs say, is the absolute power of a captain. While it’s necessary to have a strong chain of command during an emergency, they say, the strict hierarchy carries over in ways that can leave vulnerable people without a voice. It can make them easy targets.
Greta’s Story
Greta Anderson fought American Airlines and won. She’d been a well-regarded flight attendant for the company since the 1970s when, in 2003, she was labeled “unfit for duty” and fired.
Anderson sued American in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, accusing the carrier of employment discrimination, and in 2008 a jury awarded her nearly $1.5 million, including $1 million for mental and/or emotional pain and suffering. The airline appealed — and Anderson prevailed again. (Details about the incidents that led up to the dismissal and the lawsuit can be found here and here, and in a future book she’s working on.)
Anderson has not yet found justice for another brutal experience while on the job for American. Months before her firing, in November 2002, she worked on a flight to Nashville, where she says she was raped in her hotel room.
After landing, she was tired and ready to retreat to her room with a salad and an early night when she was approached by a fellow FA. He wanted to talk. He was having big problems at work and needed a friendly ear, he said.
She said no.
He asked again. Again, she declined.
“I didn’t want a guy in my room,” she says. “He seemed to accept it.”
But he came to her room later anyway, carrying ice, Cokes and mini-bottles of Jack Daniels she suspected he took off the plane.
“He said he just wanted to talk. This big, six-foot-two guy was so convincing,” she recalls. “I realized later he must have done this before. I let him in.”
Once inside, she believes he drugged her drink and she blacked out.
Regaining consciousness at one point, “I remember lying on my stomach. I knew I was totally naked. I was being raped vaginally from behind. And I was being hit. It was the violence I can’t forget,” she remembers. “He was punching me in the back. I could not move my legs. I was so drugged I couldn’t scream; I had no vocal chords.”
The next morning, after he’d left, she tried to reason through the fog of the drugs. Go to the hospital. Get a rape kit. Go to the police.
As quickly as she put those thoughts together, other, darker ones clouded her brain: You already have problems with American. They won’t believe you. You’re going to cancel a flight for over 100 passengers. You’ll lose your job. He’ll say it was consensual. He’ll say you let him into your hotel room. He’ll say you willingly took the drugs. You have to go to work.
She went to work. Upon landing, the passengers filed out, and she “walked back to the rear of the aft cabin and I looked at my rapist and I said to him, ‘I know what you did to me. You drugged me and you raped me.’”
He replied, “And who is going to believe you, bitch?”
She ended up reporting the attack to American, she says, because she felt a responsibility for other women he might assault in the future.
Anderson says her base manager put a note in her file about her report.
“The [employee] record said ‘Greta had a conflict with an employee.’ The accountability fell on me,” Anderson says. “He continued to fly and I lost my job. They immediately tried to neutralize me. When women report, it’s always, ‘she’s crazy.’ That’s how they discredit you.”
She added, “And that was that.”
An Industry-Wide Problem
Crimes like these are part of the ugly underbelly of a heavily male-dominated industry at the top, and it is by no means unique to American. Cases from other airlines can be found online, including in this 2017 story by Jamie Feldman, this 2018 story by Kate Beckman and again in Kaley Johnson’s stories in the Star-Telegram.
The people in and around the aviation industry I spoke to for this story say the problem does seem to be worse at American than at other U.S.-based commercial airlines, but there are varying opinions as to why that is. Sources say they believe that company culture is geared to ignore victims and protect pilots. The amount of time, money and resources put into every pilot’s training is enough to make them some of the company’s most precious assets, and sources say American treats them accordingly. The gold standard is Southwest, renowned for its employee-friendly corporate culture.
A new CEO who is a longtime American insider is set to take the reins at the end of March, but will the change of leadership make any difference? It remains to be seen.
American Airlines did not respond to requests for comment, but part of their stated policy reads: “Sexual harassment complaints will be investigated by the company and the airline will take ‘prompt and appropriate corrective action to stop any harassment or inappropriate conduct and prevent its recurrence,’” according to the Star-Telegram.
As attorney Miller says, “American’s literature says, ‘You see something, report it. We’ll protect you. We’ll take care of you. We don’t tolerate bad behavior.’ Well, that’s what they say but they did exactly the opposite in this case.”
Ultimately, as in the military, the more women rise higher in the ranks and sit in the cockpit, the less these behaviors and crimes will be tolerated.
But it’s a slow process. I heard from female cockpit crew, including pilots and past flight engineers, who say they had to work with men who followed an unwritten rule: NFCP, or No Females in The Cockpit.
Women in the cockpit reported unwanted touching; intimidation; unwanted bear hugs; pornographic magazines left in their view; comments like, shouldn’t you be in the galley?; pinning to walls and breathing on necks; and forced “good luck” kisses before flights. (These anecdotes relate to reports about a few men more than ten years ago. I am not suggesting many women at American endure this, or that it continues today, or that it’s prevalent).
Some female pilots and flight engineers quit American to get away from the harassment; others quit the business altogether.
It’s a hard cycle to break when there are still alleged assailants in the ranks, no matter how few their numbers. “Those same pilots are now mentoring the younger, mostly male pilots, and the cycle continues,” said one former FA.
Still, there is momentum and a groundswell of victims finding the strength, desire, courage, and means to step forward and tell their stories on the record, to file lawsuits, to join up in so many links that they create an unbreakable chain. Look for reports to increase exponentially in the coming months. There is strength in numbers.
* I am only privy to experiences shared by women who faced the abuse mentioned in this story. Clearly there is every likelihood there are male victims out there, too.
** Disclosure: I have a personal connection to an aspect of this story, but there are sensitivities that make it inappropriate for me to elaborate for now.
**“Abigail” and her story are composites of several flight attendants in order to protect their identities.
SARA HAMMEL is the author of the The Strong Ones (2021), a #1 bestselling book that tells the story of a groundbreaking seven-month U.S. Army women’s strength study and its long-term impact on women in the military. She began her journalism career investigating an enormous funding disparity between men and women’s sports in her university’s Division I college athletic program. A famous men’s coach called and tried to scare her off writing the front-page series. Nevertheless, she persisted.
Her work has also appeared U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, The Sunday Times Magazine (UK), Glamour, Shape and more. She contributed to the feminist anthology Letters of Intent along with such icons as Judy Blume, Ntozake Shange and Gloria Steinem. Perhaps best known for her viral 2016 resignation letter from People magazine, she has covered high-profile crime stories across Europe and the U.S. including the Amanda Knox case in Italy, the disappearance of Madeline McCann in Portugal, and the tragic school shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. She is the author of two mystery novels: The Underdogs and Famous Last Words.
