Delta Airlines staff did nothing as drunk passenger sexually assaulted NY teen girl and mom on 9-hour flight from JFK: lawsuit
A woman and her teenage daughter say Delta Air Lines staff served a boorish passenger drink after drink, then did nothing when he manhandled and sexually assaulted them on a long flight from JFK Airport to Greece, according to a federal lawsuit.
The pilot and flight attendants didn’t even call police to have the man arrested after the eight hour and 40 minute ordeal, and offered the traumatized mom an insulting 5,000 “SkyMiles” as an apology, the lawsuit alleges.
The mother and her 16-year-old daughter, New York state residents identified in court papers as A.A. and N.A., filed a $2 million negligence and civil rights lawsuit against Delta in Brooklyn Federal Court on Tuesday.
“As a parent, protecting your child is always priority No. 1,” their lawyer, Evan Brustein, told the Daily News. “What happened to my clients during a flight was not just a nightmare, it was completely preventable.”
The mother and daughter boarded Flight 202 to Athens International Airport on July 26, 2022, the lawsuit alleges. The mom sat in the aisle seat and the daughter sat in the middle seat, just a few feet away from the flight attendants’ galley.
The woman next to them swapped seats to sit with her husband, and she was replaced by the passenger from hell — an intoxicated man who asked for a vodka on the rocks before the flight even took off, the suit says.
“Over the first three hours of the flight, the Delta flight attendants served the intoxicated Delta passenger approximately ten vodka on ice drinks,” the lawsuit alleges. “The intoxicated Delta passenger drank every drink the Delta flight attendants served him.”
As he became visibly drunker, the man started talking to the teen and loudly asking invasive questions about where she lived, the lawsuit alleges.
She turned her back to tell her mother she was scared, and the man started touching her back, yelling “so loudly that the surrounding passengers were reacting,” according to the lawsuit.
At that point the mother flagged down a flight attendant in the nearby galley, who unhelpfully told her to “be patient,” the lawsuit alleges.
At one point, the man ran to the bathroom to vomit, and the mom tried to convince another flight attendant to cut him off and start serving him coffee — but when he returned, he had a glass of wine in his hand, the suit says.
After five separate complaints, the lead flight attendant finally came over and told the man and said, “The ladies next to you are complaining that you are bothering them. Stop talking to them,” which led to him screaming and cursing, calling them “b-----s” and c---s,” the suit alleges.
The rattled teen suffered a “panic attack” after that, and she put her head on her mom’s lap to calm down, then felt the man’s “clammy fingers underneath her shirt climbing up her back,” according to the lawsuit. When she felt his fingers reach her bra strap, she jumped out of her seat — and the man grabbed her mother’s leg and moved up her thigh.
The mom and daughter got out of their seats and begged the flight attendants to talk to the pilot and let them switch seats. The plane staff said their hands were tied because no one wanted to move — and an attendant even said that as a practice serving booze to an alcoholic is easier than risking a confrontation, the suit alleges.
Finally, a passenger named Nikolaos saw the teen crying and offered to changed seats, telling the drunken man to shut up when he complained about it.
Mom asked a flight attendant to contact police, but the attendant told her to “calm down and think about it,” and never returned, according to the suit.
No police arrived to greet them in Athens, and the man was hustled off the plane ahead of the other passengers, the lawsuit alleges. Nikolaos was given 5,000 SkyMiles for being a “hero” — the same number the mom was offered as an apology, the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit doesn’t specify if the mother or daughter contacted police on their own after landing, and their attorney didn’t specify that to The News.
When asked about the lawsuit, Delta spokesperson Morgan Durrant said, “While we don’t have any specific comment on this pending litigation, Delta has zero tolerance for customers who engage in inappropriate or unlawful behavior. Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and our people.”
