Alaska First Class Passenger Sexually Harassed By Seatmate, Crew Does Nothing

Updated: January 28, 2022

Published: November 30, 2017

This story just sounds awful. Randi Zuckerberg (who is an entrepreneur and is also the sister of Mark Zuckerberg) shared on Twitter a letter she addressed to Alaska Airlines management regarding a flight yesterday from Los Angeles to Mazatlan.

Here’s what she Tweeted:

Feeling disgusted & degraded after an @AlaskaAir flight where the passenger next to me made repeated lewd sexual remarks. The flight attendants told me he was a frequent flier, brushed off his behavior & kept giving him drinks. I guess his $ means more than our safety?

And here’s the full letter she sent, which she attached to the Tweet:

To summarize, the guy next to her was sexually harassing her (asking if she fantasized about female colleagues, commenting on the women boarding the plane, etc.). When she brought it to the attention of the crew, they said that the guy was a regular on the route and a frequent flyer on the airline, and said she shouldn’t take offense to it. They jokingly asked if he was behaving today, and kept serving him more and more alcoholic drinks, and offered to reseat her in a middle seat in the back of the plane.

Less than two hours later she Tweeted that two executives from Alaska reached out to her and said they were performing an investigation:

UPDATE: I just got off the phone with two executives from @AlaskaAir who informed me that they are conducting an investigation and have temporarily suspended this passenger’s travel privileges. Thank you for taking this seriously.
— Randi Zuckerberg 🤗 (@randizuckerberg) November 30, 2017

I’m curious what comes of this, and if they share the results with the public. What an unfortunate situation…

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Derek Diamond

January 13, 2018, 3:29 pm

Many people travel alone now so seat switching is easier. Why not suggest to the FA a switch in seats, such as 2A 2C 3A 3C 4A 4C (the fighting people are in 4A and 4C) 2A and 4A switch seats. 3C and 4C switch seats. That way, it's not like one of the two are being moved but both are.

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Jeff Toister Guest

December 3, 2017, 11:40 am

@Lucky this is an interesting case that will almost certainly shed light on many similar incidents. I'd guess many companies lack clear guidelines for how to handle one customer harassing another. Two small issues with your headline: 1) At this point, it's an allegation, not a fact. Alaska is right to conduct an investigation. It's horrible if true, though these allegations aren't true 100% of the time. 2) It is not sexual harassment, at least as defined by the EEOC, since the behavior did not involve an employee. This matters a bit since Alaska might have to respond very differently than it would if the passenger was accused of harassing a flight attendant. My guess is this legal gray area will cause some internal tension at Alaska between legal and PR. Regardless of the outcome, it's definitely a bad look for Alaska.

Anne k Member

December 2, 2017, 12:50 am

I started out disgusted wth JS and his comment and then it went downhill from there! Regular readers learn to ignore anything Debit posts due to,the fact that his posts generally display his immaturity. But I have to say, Edison knocked it out of the park! Great response! My hope is this jack arse is an executive who works for a large corporation that contracts with the airline! He will then have to explain to HIS boss why he is banned from flying ALaska Airlines! Fingers crossed!

Mark Guest

December 1, 2017, 11:48 pm

Just another example of an entitled flight attendant employed by the little airline that thinks they invented First Class

Happyflighting Guest

December 1, 2017, 7:41 am

Couldn't the crew have switched Randi to another first class seat with a male occupant who would then end up next to the guy? I would have been willing to trade seats with her under the circumstances... It would have been better than nothing, and beget than a middle seat in y

Alaska First Class Passenger Sexually Harassed By Seatmate, Crew Does Nothing

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